Transformers: Shadow - Book 3 - Resurrection
by Cylinder-the-Autobot
Summary: Would the course of history travel down a different path if minor details in the narrative were changed only slightly? For the Autobots, absolutely. As the doomsday clock inches closer to midnight, war looms on the horizon, and Cylinder must come to terms with the truth of her identity if she is to finish the fight she started.
1. Chapter 1 - The Spark

Part 1 – Secrets Kept

Chapter 1 – The Spark

Would the course of history travel down a different path if minor details in the narrative were changed only slightly? Possibly.

For many, time is relative, defined and standardized by civilizations only for the purpose of tracking events. Every system is different, competing with other methods of dating for their universal prominence. For others, the course of time and everything surrounding it is seen as one long stream of consciousness, carefully maintained and planned down to the last detail. And should one of those details change, the entire course changes with it. The intended storyline is thrown off balance, leaving others to suffer in the wake of the confusion.

There was one such example, where a small, overlooked detail helped lay the groundwork for the path history was about to embark on without any means of escape. Even the smallest occurrences can lead to unimaginable results, and this one in particular just so happened to lead to the creation of something that would ultimately spell disaster for others years down the road.

It all started with a fuel leak. Actually, this story began eons ago, before the war between the Autobots and Decepticons was even a passing thought in anyone's processor, before millions of years of violence and uprising consumed everything in its wake. But this particular incident served as one of the many critical moments along history's destined course.

It was a small mishap that could have been avoided had the mechanic in charge of the fuel system aboard the cargo vessel paid more attention to the growing puddle of energon beneath a small crack in its central pipeline. Maybe if he bothered to follow the tedious yet thorough protocol for pre-launch checks and inspected anything beneath his shoulders, or maybe if he was not already preoccupied with the femme on his arm, the leak would have been spotted and repaired, and nothing out of the ordinary would have occurred that day. Time would have followed the path it was supposed to take.

The mechanic's mistake, if he ever realized it, would do a lot more that force the vessel to alter its course to save fuel. It would also alter the course of Cybertronian history itself.

It was well after the launch, a special supply run to occupied territory ordered by high command itself, when the ship's captain became aware of the leak – they were losing the vital fuel they needed to complete the trip, and they were losing it exponentially fast.

The captain, a small yet battle-hardened femme, ordered her crew to look into alternate routes immediately. The vessel could still finish its mission, but only if there was another way to travel without alerting enemy forces. Deep in the back of her processor though, the captain already knew what was inevitably to come.

Her fear, though she would never show it, was only affirmed when her lieutenant and ship's pilot confirmed that the fastest and quite possibly the only alternate route that at least somewhat guaranteed the survival of the "precious cargo" aboard the vessel strayed just on the edge of enemy territory – just close enough to be detected by their tracking systems.

Silently listening to the report, the captain approached the bridge's window that overlooked the vast expanse of space surrounding them. Far beyond her line of sight sat the destination so patiently waiting for this "precious cargo." She deliberately eyed the one planet that stood in the way of that goal.

Of all the rock piles in the universe, why did this particular ball of undesirable matter seem to attract the most headaches for Cybertronians? It was taunting her, luring her into what she was sure could only be a trap.

Without a word, the captain nodded to her lieutenant, indicating her command to change course.

"I'm sure it'll be fine," he said as optimistically as he could, punching in the numbers for the altered route on the controls with a bit of reluctance. It was the first time in many cycles as a cargo pilot that his hand began to tremble. Cargo ships never strayed into enemy territory unless they had a death wish … or were desperate to ensure the cargo on board made it to its destination.

The captain did not respond, turning to exit the bridge. She moved purposefully, colossal presence drawing attention away from her small frame with every room she moved through. No one dared looked her in the optics or greet her with the formal salute, as the firm, emotionless expression in her stone cold face was enough to indicate her desire to be left alone.

The guards in charge of the cargo hold flinched when she entered the hallway they stood watch in, nervously averting their gazes as she stood before them. Though most of them towered above her, they dared not look down. Without a word – she was their captain after all – she walked past them, entering the access code to the heavily guarded door and its contents beyond.

In her mind, only one thought circulated. It played at her processor and made her circuits buzz in a way she was not used to. Like a tiny electrical current, the gripping thought would only cease if she were able to satisfy her curiosity. It was not so much the mission her crew was ordered to embark on– urgent transports were common when the war was going unfavorably – but rather _what_ they were carrying, what meant so much to the war effort, that confused her. What lied behind the cargo doors?

In truth, no one had told her just what this "precious cargo" the ship had on board was, or why a primarily weapons transport crew was given clearance to handle it without so much as an escort to their destination.

Immediately upon entering the large cargo bay, the captain noticed a drastic drop in temperature on her sensors as the door shut behind her, leaving the small frame in total darkness. She activated her exterior lights and took a long gaze around the mostly empty room, save for the oblong crate in the corner where the ship's cooling units sat. With an optic ridge arched she slowly made her way in that direction, feeling her spark pulse wildly the closer she got.

The crate was made of a heavy duty, armor-plated metal typically worn by the most elite warriors in battle, and much like the vacuum of space, was ice cold to the touch. The pressure in the captain's chest warned her not to pry any further, but like the stubborn femme she had always been, she could not resist. Something else urged her to keep looking as she located the latch that opened the crate, hands trembling with anticipation. She gave it a quick tug, admitting to herself her excitement at trying to discover what was hidden inside.

She regretted the thought immediately.

Nestled safely within the layers of protective material sat three glass chambers, and three small orbs of electrical energy inside them. The captain backed away from the crate to take in the sight before her, optics wide, spinal strut stiffened.

Sure, she had seen sparks without vessels many times in her career, but never before had she actually transported them off of Cybertron, away from the factories that continuously produced them on assembly lines, and especially not as "precious cargo." Moreover, she could not recall a time when sparks had to be kept in sub-zero temperature conditions like this. Sparks, being the warmest point in any transformer's body, needed plenty of heat to survive without their protective shells.

There was a part of the captain that wanted her to not believe what she was seeing, but the other part poked through the haze, leaving a sickening feeling in her tanks.

Just what kind of sparks were these? The air was too cold for any normal spark to survive very long, the environment too dark. And the energy that circulated around them, floating in the air, teasing the captain's systems, was too heavy, too powerful, and frankly too painful for them to be anything but normal.

The captain barely had enough time to sort her thoughts when the ship's outer hull shuddered violently and gave way. A noiseless flash, followed by the sound of metal being ripped apart, signaled to everyone on board that the enemy had, in fact, noticed their ship, and the welcome party was more than eager to get acquainted with its occupants.

Almost instantly, the crew felt the effect of the regulated atmosphere on the ship meeting the dark, endless vacuum of space. Any gaseous substance on board immediately rushed out of the gaping hole in the hull, and failed systems briefly disrupted the gravitational pull on board, sending several bots flying into the darkened void.

The captain did not move, slowly shutting the lid of the crate and activating the only weapon she had on her – an electrocution staff. Whatever these sparks were, she now knew why this mission was so critical.

Looking out the window of the ship's bridge at the beautiful blue planet beneath, the place where the enemy troops came from, the lieutenant was able to activate the warning alarm as he was shot through the chest, spark fading instantly.

The ship shuddered once more as the captain momentarily switched off her optics, surrendering to the inevitable outcome of this detour – her ship was under attack. There was no stopping the onslaught now. All she could do was defend and delay.

* * *

 _Earth. 1987._

Aside from a minor electrical fire in his lab, it was a relatively calm day for Wheeljack. Though Ratchet would be disinclined to agree with that statement, the Autobot medic nonetheless begrudgingly allowed his colleague to let his imagination run free on a new invention, even though he was positive it would eventually (and quite literally) end up in flames at some point.

Beaming at his friend's approval, Wheeljack jubilantly strolled down the long hallway of the _Ark_ , waving to other Autobots with the same level of energy everyone expected from him, though most of them were marveling at the burns on his arm from the fire.

Wheeljack did this for a while, wandering aimlessly throughout the shipwreck-turned-base of the _Ark_ , mentally mulling over the equations he produced that morning. During his directionless stroll, several familiar forms caught the corner of his optics. Hunched over an array of control modules that once made up the _Ark_ 's small bridge, each of them focused intently on the large screen set up in the middle of the room.

Curiosity getting the best of him, Wheeljack joined the small watch party unannounced, quietly staring the screen that blinked slowly. In its center, several pixels made up a blue dot, probably representing the Earth, followed by a series of rings whose diameter grew larger and larger the further it radiated from the dot. In the top right corner of the screen, another dot teetered along the outermost ring, blinking yellow to signify it as something of concern.

After a few more moments of silence, Wheeljack spoke up, startling everyone around the console except Prowl. The Autobot second-in-command, though he never said anything, was aware of the scientist's presence the entire time, but was too focused on the task at hand to bother shooing him away.

"What are we looking at?" Wheeljack asked curiously, ignoring the disapproving and alarmed glares from the other bots in the room.

Optimus Prime, the one Autobot who seemed to be the calmest among the group, save Prowl, stood at his full height, staring down at Wheeljack, though with more amusement than irritation in his optics. The Autobot leader appeared tired to the scientist, fighting the fatigue with his impressive stature that dwarfed the majority of the Earth-bound squadron.

"Jazz's team is investigating an unknown energy signature in the outer territories," he replied calmly, returning his attention to the screen once more.

"Decepticon, or…?" Wheeljack prodded, moving closer to the screen. He absentmindedly pushed Prowl out of the way, earning a displeased scowl from the already annoyed black and white mech.

"We're not sure yet," Prowl spoke deliberately, tone trying to convey his message of frustration the scientist clearly was not picking up. "That's what we're waiting to hear."

"Is this about the Matrix, Prime?" Wheeljack asked almost immediately, eyeing his leader. For the past few weeks, Optimus had been complaining to the medical staff (a group Wheeljack was somehow qualified to be in, much to Ratchet's irritation) about a pain in his chest that only subsided when the Matrix of Leadership, the symbol of his position as Prime, was removed from the camber in occupied inside him. Despite countless tests and system resets, the unsettling feeling remained stronger than ever.

Then one day, for no apparent reason, it stopped.

From the beginning Wheeljack voiced his concerns that the pain Optimus was feeling was not just a bug in his system, but perhaps a warning or a bad omen from within the Matrix itself. Decepticon activity had been awfully quiet lately, which usually meant something big was in the works. Optimus denied all of this, and continued his business as usual, though the pain lingered.

Wondering if it had started up again and Optimus had neglected to tell anyone, Wheeljack had a hard time believing it to be just a coincidence that strange activity was occurring in their territory. Though he was never overtly religious, the battle-hardened scientist had a strange tendency to trust higher powers when things did not feel right.

"Do you really think a Decepticon ship would be stupid enough to come through this area?" a younger voice chimed in from behind one of the consoles, breaking Wheeljack's focus. Sideswipe patiently waited for his answer, bright blue optics offset by his lopsided smirk. The red Autobot looked directly at Prowl, hoping to illicit some sort of annoyed huff from the second-in-command, but Optimus was the one that answered.

"Possibly, if negligence has anything to do with it," he replied.

"Or desperation," Prowl added coldly.

"That's gotta be pretty desperate then," Wheeljack mused, optics never leaving the ominously blinking screen.

* * *

Jazz stared blankly at the cargo vessel's mangled outer hull. He imagined that if there was oxygen where he was, the ship would have been engulfed in flames by now, especially with the amount of artillery fire his team had barraged it with the minute they saw the Decepticon insignia plastered on its side. Now the symbol Jazz had come to associate with tyranny sat torn apart by the vacuum of space. How fitting.

Making his way through the ship's vast array of access tunnels and passageways, the special ops commander made short work of the pilot, frowning at the blaring sound that rang through his audios when the warning sirens activated. Though normally optimistic, Jazz knew intercept missions like these required quick and precise action. There was no room for nonchalant wandering or traversing the halls with the usual pep in his step, lest he become a victim of a soldier hell-bent on revenge.

Throughout the attack, an unsettling feeling crept into Jazz's processor, forcing him to slow his usually brisk pace. It was not a sense of nervousness – as in, fear that something was about to go wrong – but rather the kind of feeling that produced strong discomfort, or dread.

Of what, Jazz had no idea, but that did not stop the sensation from reaching to the Autobot's core, wrapping around his circuits, urging him to keep moving despite his body now whining in half-hearted protests. The uneasy feeling only intensified as he moved, drawn inexplicably to what he assumed was the ship's cargo hold.

Though he had not yet established a rendezvous point for his team, Jazz could already hear signs of a struggle beyond the hallway and immediately rushed to aid his comrades. As he entered the doorway that had been blasted to scrap metal, the special ops commander took in the surroundings of the cold, nearly empty storage bay.

Before him stood two of his teammates, Sunstreaker and Perceptor, and a femme he had never seen before. Her small frame twitched as if reacting to some sort of electrical surge, no doubt inflicted by the silent Autobot scientist. Her right arm hung limp from her body, energon dripping from her mouth as she stared down the barrel of Sunstreaker's gun. Instinctively, the femme, who was no doubt the ship's captain judging by the ornateness of her tiny frame, inched closer to the room's only crate, red optics narrowing.

"You wouldn't kill an unarmed femme, would you?" she hissed at the two Autobots who stood firm and alert despite outnumbering the captain. Her weapon lay discarded and broken far enough away that she could not reach it.

"Cute," was the only reply from Sunstreaker before pulling the trigger. The captain's lifeless – and faceless – shell stood still for a moment before the shockwave from the yellow Autobot's gun sent it crashing to the floor.

Sunstreaker stared at the body, dark optics expressionless, before continuing, "Sorry, honey, but this is war. I don't discriminate."

"Wow," Perceptor muttered, shaking his head. Though he was considered a decent and rather effective fighter when compared to most of his scientist colleagues, there were times where even the red Autobot was appalled by the brutality used by his own faction in combat.

"The cyberglitch cracked my windshield," Sunstreaker grumbled defensively, returning the blaster to his subspace, "You would've done the same thing."

"Sunstreaker," Jazz spoke flatly from behind the two as he made his way over to the captain's body, "Take five."

The yellow Autobot frowned but refrained from protesting, strolling out of the room with his head held high, kicking the limp body of one of the guards he shot earlier.

Jazz twisted his mouth into a frown, optic band flicking off briefly in thought, when Perceptor spoke up.

"I wonder what was so important that it needed a giant ship for transport," the scientist mused, "Or why the captain felt it necessary to personally guard it herself." He was referring to the crate. It had been thrown off its tethers and had traces of energon spatter all over it, but otherwise still stood upright.

"To be flying through here, either they're stupid or this must be _really_ important," Jazz surmised, trying to ignore the sinking pain in his chest Perceptor no doubt felt as well. It was as if the whole room was engulfed with a constant, though obviously disturbed, flow of energy unlike anything he had ever been accustomed to. It flowed throughout his body, giving him a sense of fear when he really should have had no reason to be afraid. His frame shuddered.

Despite his reluctance, Perceptor carefully pushed the lid open and peered inside. The contents of the crate were just as torn up as its exterior, complete with broken glass and shredded insulation, more than likely caused in some part by the fight. The captain was a much better fighter than he and Sunstreaker assumed she would be.

The scientist sifted through the materials, stopping abruptly when he felt a puddle of gelatinous liquid make contact with his digits. Producing a small sensor from his subspace, the scientist hovered it over the gel, frowning when the device made an affirmative ping.

He slowly stood and shook his head, this time out of remorse more than shock. "Plasma." The scientist turned to his commander, brow furrowed in grief. "There were sparks in here," he muttered, "They must have been crushed when the attack started."

Jazz hesitated for a moment, peering into the crate to confirm that he too had seen the bright blue puddle of lifeless energy. "You think that femme crushed them before we got here?"

Perceptor shook his head, "I'm not sure. If they were so valuable, then possibly for the sake of protecting Decepticon technology, but why then would she fight Sunstreaker and myself – give up her life – for an empty crate?"

The two Autobots found that neither of them could answer that question. Jazz, the master of thinking outside the box, and Perceptor, easily one of Cybertron's brightest minds, were both stumped. The scientist reached back into the crate, sifting through the shredded insulation material no doubt meant to protect the now useless glass pressure chambers the sparks were housed in. As he gently pushed packaging aside, he suddenly tensed and stumbled back with a yelp, causing Jazz to instinctively jump and reach for his blaster.

When he regained his bearings, the black and white Autobot barked, "What the hell, man?"

Perceptor, too stunned to pick himself off the floor, mouthed a few incoherent words towards the crate.

"What?" Jazz pressed.

"S-shock," Perceptor managed to mumble as his systems attempted to reset themselves, cooling fans activating, "It … it shocked me."

"What shocked you?" Jazz asked incredulously, peering inside the crate once more when he did not get a response. What he saw needed no physical contact to send chills throughout his own body as he stepped back in alarm.

Still nestled safely amongst the various wrappings and protective material, one glass case continued to emit a bright blue glow. It sat motionless, glow dimming and brightening in response to the waves of energy that floated about inside, as if nothing bad had ever befallen the crate or its contents.

Perceptor needed no sensor to be certain that what he saw was a crystalline ball of electric blue plasma – a spark. It glowed vibrantly in the darkness of the cargo hold, sending wave after wave of energy throughout the room, affecting every living thing in it.

But that feeling was anything but positive. Though the spark was a beautiful sight to behold, truly a masterpiece forged by skilled hands, the energy it produced did not settle the nerves of the bots present like a regular spark would. Instead it agitated them to the point where their own sparks began to pulse and contract from the negative sensation.

Unsurprisingly, none of this stopped Jazz from reaching his hands into the crate and pulling the glass vessel out. Though his body was rigid from the contact with the case, and a wave of negative energy ran up and down his circuits, the sub-commander's mind was reeling with questions. His mouth hung open for some time, before finally managing to mutter the only thought on his processor:

"Why?"

Perceptor, having forced his systems to correct themselves, rose to his feet and carefully reached for the case, tilting it from every sort of angle ever so gently to inspect its sole occupant.

"Why what?" the scientist muttered, optics transfixed on the case like a bot possessed.

Jazz hesitated, shrugging off the uncomfortably welcoming feeling from the case his own spark was beginning to respond to. "Why would the 'Cons ever need something like this? Why does this thing even exist?"

Perceptor never answered, lost in his own thoughts. The spark seemed to be pulsing a little faster, the bursts of energy throughout the room radiating in shorter, more frequent wavelengths. "It's agitated," he surmised, gently placing it back in the crate. That seemed to calm it down, the tension in the air dissipating slightly.

Jazz groaned, "Man, we don't even know for sure what that _is._ Don't play with it."

"I'm not planning on playing with it," Perceptor retorted, "But I would very much like to run some experiments on it."

Jazz's mouth hung open, optic ridge raised behind his visor. "Come again?" he asked. Perceptor turned to him, optics suddenly wide with a large grin on his usually reserved face. The special ops leader frowned in response. He knew that look all too well – the look of a scientist eagerly awaiting permission to embark on a new journey of discovery – and the feeling left him even more unsettled.

"Think about it, Jazz," Perceptor grinned, the light returning to the scientist's optics. "Sparks cannot be experimented on because they don't survive long enough outside a metal frame to be studied. They're forged and given a home, not a glass case for intergalactic transport." Jazz remained unmoved, even when the scientist began waving his hands for effect.

"Like you said," he continued, "There's something very abnormal about this spark. It's being transported without a true vessel, packed away in these frigid temperatures, and it was the only one of its cluster that has survived this attack. Primus knows how strong this thing is – imagine what we can learn from it," Perceptor beamed, undeterred by Jazz's disgust.

"Whoa, man," the black and white Autobot spoke, "Just because I referred to the thing as an 'it' doesn't make it any less of a living being. We're talking about new life here."

"Are we?" Perceptor retorted pointedly. Jazz did not reply, the words hanging over him.

"How can you be so sure?" he continued, "You felt the energy in here as well as I – there is _nothing_ natural about this. How do you know the Decepticons weren't planning on creating weapons of mass destruction with it? That's why we should be experimenting on it for as long as we can before it fades … and arguing about it is not going to buy us any time," he added.

"What are you getting at?" Jazz pressed, "Are you trying to say –"

"I'm saying that this may have never been created with the intention of implanting it into a living transformer," Perceptor interrupted. He let the words sink in before continuing, the atmosphere heavier than before, "This could have been intended for a number of things – weapons, drones, new medical techniques – which is why it should be examined. Who knows, maybe we could learn something Decepticon scientists have already secretly discovered to give us a servo up on their plans."

"And what if you're wrong?" Jazz snapped, "What if this does turn out to be a spark for a _real_ transformer? Then what? Are you willing to have energon on _your_ hands?"

Perceptor hesitated, disturbed by his commander's tone, before glancing back at the crate. The electric blue spark continued to pulse vibrantly, undeterred by the heated argument before it. "If it survives, perhaps I will ask that Ratchet build it a body. Maybe then we could study it further and see just exactly what it can do." The scientist chuckled a little, closing the lid of the crate. "Who knows? Maybe the Decepticons just lost what could have been our worst nightmare."

* * *

"Absolutely not!"

The thundering voiced caused the Autobots standing outside the door to the medical bay to stumble back. Since Jazz's crew had returned from their mission – officially reporting that they had intercepted and destroyed a Decepticon cargo vessel and everything on board – the _Ark_ had been quiet. _Abnormally_ quiet. In fact, everything, even the more talkative Autobots, stayed quiet.

Jazz seemed to behave the strangest amongst them, acting unusually uptight when he instructed his crew to remain silent, nearly threatening time in the ship's brig should anyone so much as mention what had happened had it not been for Optimus' calming presence to dispel the agitation.

Now without any sense of just what was going on, nearly half the _Ark_ 's Autobots crowded in the hallway outside the medical bay, desperately trying to hear the meeting called by Perceptor behind the soundproof doors.

At least they were somewhat soundproof, giving way only when Ratchet was in one of his moods.

On the other side of the wall, the Autobot medic fumed at Perceptor's proposition, optics glancing furiously between the mixed reactions around him. Prowl's face remained blank, optics trained on a data pad, Optimus' confused, Perceptor's and Wheeljack's optimistically indifferent to their colleague's disgust, and Jazz's staring down Perceptor with the biggest "I-told-you-so" reaction he was positive he had ever given anyone.

"You want me to let you play with this 'spark' you found aboard a nasty, disgusting cargo ship?" Ratchet spoke through his clenched teeth. "Are you out of your mind?"

"Come on, Ratch," Wheeljack chimed in, processor already running away with the possibilities of this new discovery, "It'll be fun –"

"You, I'm ignoring," Ratchet growled. Wheeljack slumped in his chair. "And you," he pointed to Perceptor, optics narrowing for effect, "Have a lot of nerve asking me to help you with something like this."

"Only as a backup should the circumstances change," Perceptor assured, waving Ratchet's hand out of his face.

The medic scoffed, looking at Optimus, "Does he think I'm a Decepticon? I save lives, not toy with them!"

Every Autobot felt it. The tension in the small medical bay caused another form of energy to permeate the atmosphere. Its presence overwhelmed the six Autobots, leaving them to instinctively move away from the glass case that sat on the medical table between them. The ball of energy appeared to glow brighter than the room itself, cloaking its occupants in a light shade of electric blue. It remained this way for a while, pulsing violently.

Prowl seemed to be the most affected by it. The normally stoic second-in-command clutched his data pad tightly, his alt-mode's door panels drooping uncomfortably behind his back. "What's wrong with it?" he asked, voice attempting to remain firm.

Ratchet sighed, also affected by the painfully negative energy but unfortunately more used to it than the other Autobots. He felt the same feeling often, having been present at the hour of death for many. "It's stressed. We need to calm down … otherwise it could burst."

"We?" Jazz arched an optic ridge, arms folded as if protecting his own spark chamber.

The room was silent for some time. Each Autobot thought to themselves, formulating different ideas about what to do with this strange anomaly. Even Prowl, the type of bot who planned everything down to the tiniest details, could not fathom exactly what it was he looked at, nor could he accurately predict the consequences of it being here. The thought left an annoyed frown on his face.

Perceptor finally broke the silence, optics dimming a bit as if running low from his initially optimistic outlook, "Ratchet," he paused to ensure the medic was listening, "If you don't think this is right, then I won't force you to do anything. We can give the spark a proper send-off and go about our usual business. I don't mind." Of course he minded. Every project, even ones that appeared to have no potential, the scientist would commit himself to fully. But there had been many times where Perceptor was forced to give up on a project for numerous reasons – lack of funding, destroyed labs, results going nowhere – this was not any different.

"I don't think that's your choice to make," Ratchet muttered, shifting his gaze to Optimus. The Autobot leader had remained quiet throughout the entire meeting, optics never breaking contact with the case. Whether he liked it or not, this spark's life had now fallen into the veteran Prime's hands.

The Matrix inside him rumbled uncomfortably, as if trying to warn him. But there was something else inside him too, perhaps within his own spark, which kept him from making a definitive answer.

Finally, he relaxed, and having weighed his options – the cost it would be to maintain this strange entity, the risks to his own crew – Optimus turned to Ratchet. "I want you to begin building a frame – a protoform, nothing fancy – and I want you two," he turned to Perceptor and Wheeljack, "To monitor it. Make it comfortable. Study it so that we might assess what it needs to appropriately meld with its new body. Do _not_ experiment on it. The greatest test of all is to see how long it can survive without a true vessel. If this spark makes it past two weeks, go ahead with the fusion process. We can study it in the protoform further."

He paused, gingerly placing a hand on the glass case. His hand itched from the contact, but his circuits did not feel agitated at all. Perhaps the spark had heard him, and was relaxed in the Prime's presence. It was in that moment that he knew this spark would survive. It would grow and thrive for years to come, perhaps to become a great warrior, or a new generation of leadership, or maybe even a gifted scientist.

Straightening, Optimus now addressed his entire crew, "This conversation is not to leave this room, understood?"

"Yeah, and what are we gonna tell the crew when we suddenly have a new member running around?" Ratchet asked, one of the few Autobots brave enough to use his normally sour tone towards his commander.

Optimus thought for a moment, looking at the spark as if expecting to get an answer, when Prowl interrupted.

"Tell them we have been experimenting with artificial life."

The other five Autobots stood in astonishment at the second's simple yet heartless reply, but were unable to say anything else as he strolled out of the room without another word, probably back to his tiny office. The doors slammed before anyone outside could look at what was going on behind them.

Later that evening, while Jazz and Perceptor had gone to recharge, and Wheeljack began to – of all things – talk to the spark about Cybertron, Earth, and especially himself, Ratchet started to carry pieces of metal and welding equipment inside the med bay. He sectioned off an area in the corner to carry out this secret task, rolling a medical table behind a makeshift partition. Piece by piece, the medic began to assemble a simple form before him.

He hummed absentmindedly, spark pulsing with the rhythm. For the first time in millennia, instead of repairing forms, he finally had the chance to build one. He was given the chance to create life, rather than hope to restore it. A thousand questions buzzed throughout his processor at the worked. What would he name it? That depended on how it behaved, and whether it turned out to be a mech or a femme, he determined. What purpose would it serve? It would be nice to have an assistant medic on his staff, though the spunky energy from the spark may ultimately say otherwise. What color should he paint it? He thought about this question for most of the night.

Blue, he finally decided. Navy blue.

The red and white mech had always liked blue. The thought made him want the spark to survive to the two-week mark, even if he refused to admit it out loud.

As he began to connect fuel lines, Ratchet started an energon drip, focusing intently as each pink drop made it's way into what was beginning to look like a real, lifelike Cybertronian, while Wheeljack's stories about lab experiments echoed in the background.

* * *

Even as time went on, as the war grew more and more violent and vital sources disappeared by the hundreds, that same energon would continue to serve as the lifeblood for all transformers across the universe. Sure it would change over time in response to the environment it was in – sometimes the grade varied, sometimes certain chemical mixtures produced different colors and compositions to suit a specific transformer population, and other times it was refined and cleaned.

The energon on Earth, while high in electrons and other substances that invigorated systems, was incredibly crude. The blue planet's natural resources, plus the long process of converting organic materials into cybernetic matter, could suit a Cybertronian so well for only so long. But if one were raised on the energon produced by such a planet, the affect it had was not the worst thing ever – the familiar taste was welcome, in fact, serving as a reminder of home.

Such was the case with Cylinder as she silently watched the thick pink fluid run from several tubes into various ports along her body. Extracted from the oils that ran through the Dragon Realms, the energon brought her back to a simpler time. The blue Aerialbot had gotten used to these transfusions, or as Perceptor liked to put it, the most effective way to remove old, contaminated fuel as well as extract blue energon fragments. Consumed for the sake of survival in the weeks she had spent trapped here, disconnected and desperate for energy, the solid crystals proved to be extremely damaging to her fuel system, even though they may very well have saved her life.

The Autobots on Cybertron had received Rodimus Prime's message asking for reinforcements rather quickly, but actually pinpointing the source of the message and confirming the existence of this planet took nearly two weeks to complete. When a spacebridge was finally opened, the newly-arrived Autobots were stunned to find their welcome party standing amongst a group of odd-looking, winged reptiles, barely supporting their weakened bodies, practically ripped apart.

Rodimus supported cracked plating in several areas, and his left arm ended up needing to be stripped to the wire to stop a spasm that occurred after the onslaught against the town the reptiles called "Syandemel."

Cylinder was in far worse shape. Half blind, low on energy, and unable to transform, the Aerialbot somehow managed to stay on her own two feet despite her body's protest. It was a testament to the way she was designed – light and easily susceptible to damage, but sturdy. Her abdomen and wing had been pierced clean through but sealed as effectively as possible, judging by the dried energon around the holes. Her cracked optic had been completely shut off to save energy, and her fingers were missing pieces of metal, exposing the sensitive wires and cables underneath to the damp winter weather.

The most severe of the injuries dealt with Cylinder's back. In addition to having a shattered glass cockpit and severely damaged wings, a gaping, blackened hole dug itself into the remainder of the assembly. Had it not been for the large amount of heavily armored plating, the femme may very well have been killed by the blast from Galvatron's cannon, or at the very least her little remaining energon would be tainted with dangerous chemicals.

Though that was probably not the case, Perceptor still thought it necessary to flush her entire fuel system anyway, hence the multiple energon lines.

With her one good eye, Cylinder watched a line that led into her left arm, pink fluid dripping slowly so as not to overload her circuits. She titled her head back against the stone slab that had come to pass as a medical table in a domed building near the city's edge. Somewhere beyond her line of sight, a window allowed a stormy breeze to blow inside, carrying with it water from the winter rains. None of the high-tech equipment in the room seemed to be bothered by it.

Outside rain pounded against the stone roof, lulling the blue femme into a conscious recharge. A confused grunt compelled Cylinder to turn her head again, this time past the tube of energon and into the face of the being eyeing it intently.

On a normal day Silver might have cared more about the rain outside, content to pass the time playing in the clouds, challenging the turbulent winds to determine just who the real master of the skies was. But her ceaseless fascination with the Autobots, especially with new, different looking ones arriving in droves lately, drew her attention away from the rest of the world. Even something as simple as an energon line could hold her mesmerized for hours.

"So," Silver started, breaking the silence in the room, save for the pulse of Cylinder's spark, "Your blood is also your food?"

Cylinder chuckled, rewarding the gray dragoness with a small smile, "A machine runs on fuel," she stated sarcastically, "Why over-complicate things?"

Silver's eyes met Cylinder's good optic, arching her brow in bewilderment, "So… you drink your own blood?"

"No –"

"You're telling me you're actually a vampire?"

Cylinder opened her mouth to protest despite knowing it would be impossible to convince the dragoness otherwise once she had set her mind to it. "Where did you hear about that?" she asked instead.

"Well, Count Cylinder," Silver snickered at her own joke, this time earning an annoyed frown from the femme, "Rodimus was telling me stories from a planet you guys used to live on. No offense, but that place sounds like a real piece of work."

Cylinder huffed, "Not my planet. None taken." Of all the things the Autobot leader could tell the ever-curious Silver about his time on Earth, she never expected human fiction to be at the top of the list. Then again, the concept of dragons had not been unfamiliar creatures to humans thanks to various Earth stories.

Shifting her battered frame again, Cylinder reveled in the lack of pain she felt thanks to the absence of her wings and damaged cockpit, which were sitting in the corner of the room waiting to be repaired. She sat up, stretching as best she could without dislodging the fuel lines, and looked beyond Silver to the window.

The gray skies outside allowed the dragoness' bioluminescent markings to shine their brightest. Light from both Cylinder's spark and the Cybertronian medical lights reflected off of her scales, highlighting the tiny flecks on her cheeks that shifted in color with each movement.

After a few minutes of silence, another Autobot stepped inside the room. Perceptor had finally returned from his supply run, proudly brandishing a metal device in his hands.

"I've got it, my dear," the scientist spoke warmly towards Cylinder, refined accent giving off an exceedingly prim and proper aura. "Sent directly from Earth, one optic thanks to our colleagues' careful attention to detail."

"It's about time," Cylinder mused. Though both Autobots spoke in what Silver assumed was Cybertronian, the words lost on her, the dragoness could sense the relaxed tone in the femme's voice. For once, her posture was loose and comfortable, trusting even. The two Autobots spoke like old friends, not like soldiers on the front lines, nor as strictly professional associates.

This was a side to Cylinder Silver was very unused to – not even Rodimus got the same level of friendly treatment. Whoever this Autobot was, he must have been a close friend of the femme.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Perceptor switched to the language of the Dragon Realms on seeing Silver poke her head out from behind Cylinder. "I did not see you there."

Silver smiled, eyeing the object in the red Autobot's hand, "What's that?"

"My new optic," Cylinder replied, leaning herself back on the stone table.

Silver frowned suspiciously, "Why is it so big?"

"Cylinder's optics were specially designed to suit her powerful processor," Perceptor grinned, rotating the object so Silver could get a good look at it. "They're large for several reasons," the scientist stated proudly, pulling tools from a metal box on the floor.

Silver was not following. She understood that Cylinder's one optic no longer worked and needed to be repaired, but she could not wrap her head around why such a large device was needed to get the job done.

"I thought it was just a cracked lens," the dragoness muttered, tilting her head uncomfortably when Perceptor used his sharp metal tools to dig around Cylinder's face.

"That's what we thought too," Cylinder replied calmly, unaware of Silver's nausea-stricken face. "Turns out the whole sensor was damaged, so everything needs to be replaced."

"You can't just fix the sensor?" Silver pressed.

"Not exactly," Perceptor muttered, functioning optics focused on the task at hand. "Cylinder has capabilities not many Cybertronians posses. Her optics are specially tailored to those abilities, and if a single piece is damaged, the uniqueness of the design requires total replacement, not just part-swapping."

Silver paused, eyes shifting from Cylinder to Perceptor. She wanted to ask what the red Autobot had meant by special capabilities, but another question weighed on her mind, "You can change out entire body parts?" The disgust and shock in her tone made no impact on the scientist, who casually prodded about until he heard a click.

In one swift motion, Cylinder's damaged optic was removed from its socket, leaving a gaping hole in the head of the otherwise fully conscious and undisturbed femme.

Perceptor hummed in satisfaction, "All the time," he said, answering Silver's question. "For beings like us that live millions of years, parts don't last forever. And being in a war certainly does not keep the body in factory-like conditions for very long."

Silver frowned uncomfortably as the new optic was placed in the wide hole inside Cylinder's face. The femme was silent the whole time, arms crossed nonchalantly across her chest and face unmoving throughout the entire process. Wires and plugs clicked into place, and with a simple tap inside an open panel on her helm, the new optic roared to life.

Cylinder sat up slowly to avoid the head rush from the information being downloaded into the new piece of equipment. Before her, images of Perceptor, Silver, and the rest of the room came in sharp and clear, no longer muddled with static. It was nice to finally not feel lopsided anymore.

With the optic repaired and her face looking a bit more symmetrical, Silver's body relaxed. She moved closer, absentmindedly gnawing on her tail blade.

Perceptor stood in front of the femme, shining a small light into the lens. "Follow the light," he muttered. Behind the electric blue lenses, two sensors tracked his motions. Though he was no medic, Perceptor could not help but smile at his handiwork. When he was satisfied, he placed the device down and patted the blue Aerialbot on the shoulder. "Depth perception looks good," he commented.

"I would hope so," Cylinder replied, touching the newly installed lens with a bit of suppressed excitement. She had already forgotten the feeling of being able to see clearly, to not be hampered by the sluggish weight in her helm.

To Cylinder, the most important part of her was her optics. The highly sensitive circuits inside were used for more than just her sight. They also served as the control modules for her most potent abilities. Connected through her processor, her optics allowed her to perform various tasks from reading technology to silent communication. And of course, her optics also gave her the ability to control anything mechanical she came in contact with, though she preferred to leave that power unused as much as possible.

A curious, yet unsettling growl resonated somewhere in the femme's vast processor, approving of the new device. In an instant, the smile had disappeared from Cylinder's face, optics staring straight ahead. Neither Perceptor nor Silver, who now conversed separate from her, noticed the change, but inside, the Aerialbot could feel the possessive, intoxicating grip of the Voice louder than ever.

For a time she had thought its reign over her was gone, forced away by her resolve to control her own destiny. She was wrong. It blocked her processor like a violent storm cloud, pushing away every impulse and independent thought, reminding her that even after being dormant for the past few weeks, it was still there. It had never left.

As she sat there, staring blankly, Silver and Perceptor spoke to each other about Cybertronian physics, completely unaware that the blue femme behind them was trapped inside her own processor, a prisoner of her own mind.

* * *

There once was a time when Cylinder had control over her own processor, when the Voice did not exist. The incorporeal mass of nothingness that burned inside her had blurred her perception of time far beyond recognition, but through the distortion she could still faintly remember the days when it did not speak.

Existence had never been a subject transformers understood well. Even the most renowned philosophers in the enlightened age of the Thirteen Primes could not agree on an answer for why anyone existed, how they came into being before their sparks were forged, if they did at all, or for what purpose they were created.

Most seemed to agree that Primus was the father of all transformers and forged each one's spark and body with their own unique and individual characteristics. Some debated whether he shared his own life force with his children, arguing that a piece of him existed in every spark.

If that was the case then, what happened after they died? Were they gone forever, or did they rejoin with their source? Such became the legend behind the Matrix of Leadership, the supposed house of the remainder of Primus' spark and the Well of Allsparks, which each Autobot leader seemed to believe when they carried with them the artifact of an age long ago.

The Well and Primus' spark thus became synonymous, and most scientists theorized that a cycle of rebirth – a cycle where pieces of Primus, the sparks, die, rejoin with him, and then are reborn anew – was what governed Cybertronian life, and that cycle would continue until the end of time, unbroken, never changing.

Things were different for Cylinder when the lights turned on for the first time. Back then, on that cold spring morning aboard the _Ark_ , she had no concept of anything past or present. There was no self-awareness, no waiting anxiously for life; she was just there, floating in nothingness, lost in the void. She didn't even have a name.

All of that changed when a new energy reached out to her. It was warm and gentle, completely opposite of the cold, harsh environment she had come from. Though she remembered nothing of life in the void of nothingness, she felt everything. She felt the agitation in the voices from beyond, the stress of each little movement, but also the comfort when certain presences crossed her path.

The new energy felt strikingly familiar as she responded to its warm touch. For the first time, the sensation seemed closer than it had ever been before. Then it was gone again, but now the environment around her was different, like she had been surrounded and cradled by something unseen.

Sight was not a luxury for a spark without form, but for her, it soon would be. Suddenly, a rush of energy came pouring through her. Flash images of faces and events and worlds she was sure she had never known appeared as quickly as they left, filing themselves away in a storage area she had never known she had nor would ever be able to access again.

Somewhere beyond the darkness a voice called out. The sensation was amplified when she realized she could hear several different voices, each with their own distinct sound, clearly – no more vibrations and faint sounds, but clear, distinct vocal tones.

Then came feeling – the wonderful and strange idea of physical sensation beyond the small spark. She had no idea just what it was she was feeling, but whatever it was, she determined it was something good.

The whole rush, from beginning to end, stimulated her in a way she had never known. For the first time in as long as she could remember, there was light. There was something beyond the void. Existence was not just an illusion. That was when the darkness disappeared, and in place of it sat a screen with typed white letters. For some reason, she could understand them, hanging onto each character with an insatiable curiosity.

 _DATE … 04151987_

 _TIME … 14:23:24 UTC_

 _LOCATION … MILKY WAY GALAXY / HELIOS SOLAR SYSTEM / EARTH_

 _WINDS … 270_03_

 _VISIBILITY … 10 … SKY … CLR_

 _TEMP … 292 KELVIN_

 _COORDINATES …_ _45°18′ North, 122°30′ West_

What strange words, she thought. What are words, for that matter? What is this? What am I doing? What am _I_? These questions bombarded a place the spark did not even know she had, storing itself somewhere just beyond her reach. How did she even know what any of this even was?

Suddenly the world was not so simple as floating in the darkness.

When the words faded away, she saw before her something solid. A wall, maybe? Yeah, a wall … that word made sense.

Somewhere she knew something was off about all of this. It was as if she had known this information all along, as if the time spent suspended in nothingness was a distant memory. Time seemed to follow no chronological pattern; lines were blurred into oblivion until there was no distinction, just one long stream of conscious thought throughout eternity.

Her musing was cut off when she felt pressure somewhere on her. She shifted her glance, a sense she was determined to tame and bend to her will, down to where the pressure was, noting the large – hand? – against one of the many pieces of her metal body.

"Looking good so far," a gruff, serious voice spoke to someone behind her. The spark registered the words.

Yes. This was good. Spark and body, two parts merged together to become whole – the creation of new life – the creation of her. No longer did she have to float about aimlessly. Having a body, a vessel from which to operate, meant having a purpose. It felt natural, as if a part of her had been missing all along, only to be made full again by the melding of spark and metal. This felt right.

The metal hand that had been resting now guided her, sitting her upright on the metal slab she had been laying on. The contact was unlike anything she had ever felt, gentle and nurturing, without any indication of an intent to harm. She wondered for a moment why she was so worried about being harmed. She looked silently at where the hand had been touching her, before slowly tilting her head up to stare into the face of the frame the hand was attached to.

It was white and red, serious and firm, but it also gave away the slightest hint of curiosity behind those dark blue optics. The frame stared intently at the body, inspecting the various wires and lines that connected her to several pieces of machinery around them.

Without speaking, it nodded, stepping back to see if she could sit on her own.

Ratchet had to admit that until this point, he was convinced the transfer process would not work. The spark had survived well past the two-week mark, generating the smallest bit of joy inside him, but his concern lay not in its maturity and survivability but in the dangers the transfer process posed.

Without even stopping to consider the chemical makeup of the spark upon beginning the project, Ratchet assumed it would be male, and he therefore began to build a male protoform. But after a week went by, chemical outputs revealed just the opposite – the spark was female. Because of this, the medic found himself skipping out on several nights of recharge to reformat the body he had nearly completed, changing the frame's shape, the concentration of chemicals that went into the personality components of the processor, and so on.

The second challenge came only a few days after, when Perceptor began to report signs of erratic behavior from the spark. Upon pulling up the code she was feeding the med bay's computers, the realization hit them that they had been working with the type of energy only a certain type of bot could produce – a flyer. Any Cybertronian with flight capabilities naturally behaved impatiently whether merged with a body or not. With that knowledge, Ratchet again re-formatted his creation, adding sensors along her back to simulate the feeling of wings and to alleviate the discomfort she would have felt in their absence.

By the time the body had been painted and almost completely assembled, it looked nothing like what Ratchet had originally envisioned. It had been taken apart and put back together, added to and taken from so many times that he feared the already restless spark would be unable to merge with it.

Those fears went away the minute her electric blue optics flickered on for the first time. He watched in silence, a small, barely noticeable smile playing at his lips, as the femme sat perfectly still, rotating her head around as her optics moved curiously from object to object.

Behind the Autobot medic, Optimus, Prowl, and Jazz also watched quietly. The three commanding officers were equally as excited as they were nervous about whether or not this experiment would work, even though each of them had a different way of showing it. Optimus and Jazz were at least content to enjoy the moment of the creation of new life, though Prowl was more concerned with studying the femme's behavior so as to determine the possible ways to properly handle her once she was finally permitted to roam free about the _Ark._

Content that the young femme would not go anywhere and that everything seemed to be functioning normally, Ratchet let out a deep sigh and slumped into the chair by his desk. Two weeks of non-stop work – had he not been so anxious, he would probably already be off to recharge by now.

Perceptor stood off in one corner with Wheeljack, monitoring the various wavelengths fed to his computer through the wires connected to her processor.

"Try interacting with her," the red scientist directed his colleague, curious smile betraying his serious stature.

Without a second thought, Wheeljack approached the femme, moving slowly so as not to frighten her. His spark skipped a beat when she picked up on his presence faster than he expected and turned sharply, optics immediately making contact with his. The scientist stood frozen, mesmerized by the innocence those large optics held.

"Hey, kid, remember me? My voice? We talked all the time."

The femme did not respond, but titled her head slightly as if trying to recall something.

"Can she talk?" Wheeljack looked over his shoulder towards Ratchet, but the exhausted medic shook his helm.

"I haven't gotten the chance to put in a vocal processor yet."

"Aw, well," Wheeljack returned his gaze to the dark blue femme, "Soon, right? I bet your voice is going to be really pretty once we get you one. How does that sound?"

The femme let the words register in her mind. She understood them, but was not sure how she was supposed to respond. Knowing she owed the gray and white scientist some form of acknowledgement, she did the only thing she could think of.

The curling of the femme's unpainted lips startled Wheeljack, who backed away and the sight of the tiny grin. When he glanced behind him, no one seemed to be looking in his general direction.

"Hey, uh," he started, "Did anyone give her behavioral programming before we sparked her?"

"No," Perceptor replied idly, optics trained on the screen in front of him, "But I'm getting wonderful brainwave activity over here. What is she doing?"

"Smiling," Wheeljack replied almost too quickly. "She's smiling."

"Why is that a problem?" Jazz asked, leaning as far forward as he could without disturbing Perceptor's work.

"Sparkling's shouldn't have any sort of emotional response on their faces when they're born. They can feel the emotion, but they're not usually programmed to create a facial expression that corresponds with it until after the adjustment period," Wheeljack replied, hoping at least Perceptor understood the concern in his tone.

"Well, Wheeljack, that's probably because she's trying to replicate your s–" the scientist looked up from his screen when he suddenly realized what the problem was.

Wheeljack's mouth was obscured by a faceplate. Even if he did smile, there was no way the femme could have seen it.

The two scientists sat in silence, staring at each other in disbelief.

"I'm not following," Jazz spoke again, stretching on his toes to get a better look at the equally puzzled femme who had been hidden by a multitude of medical equipment. Her mouth was now positioned in a slight frown, optic ridge arched.

It was Ratchet who answered gravely, "If she wasn't coded with it, where did she learn it from?"

"You don't think the Decepticons could have pre-programmed her with something?" Prowl suggested, finally looking up from his data pad, seemingly unconcerned with the medic's tone.

"If they did," Ratchet replied, "I highly doubt personality components would be a priority."

The room felt silent once more. Six pairs of optics now focused on the blue femme who physically shrunk away from the attention she was getting.

"Hey, it's okay," Wheeljack reached for her hand as calmly as he could, voice low and comforting. Her clasped the small digits in his own reassuringly, noting how she responded by holding his hand back. "I bet you're just really smart. You don't need us old guys to tell you how to behave."

That seemed to relax the femme some more as her tensed shoulders drooped a little, slight smile returning to her otherwise dull, gray face.

Perceptor was the only one to not let the nagging feeling go away, immediately inspecting the wires around the femme's helm. Though she tried her best to angle her body away from his prying, the scientist was having none of it, determined to figure out why she was behaving in such an abnormally emotional manner.

"Stop, man, you're freakin' her out," Jazz protested, watching helplessly as the femme leaned away, optics flickering in agitation. The officer tried to make his way over to the scientist, but Optimus held him back.

"This doesn't make any sense," Perceptor muttered quietly, ignoring Jazz.

"Knock it off," Ratchet groaned, waving the scientist's hands away from his creation's helm.

"You know as well as I that we never programmed her with personality components," Perceptor stated firmly. "I want to know where she got it from."

"You don't think the rest of us do?" Wheeljack chirped, doing his best to soothe the femme by gently rubbing her tiny hand.

"Let it go, Perceptor," Optimus finally spoke, "We can deal with that later. Let's just make her comfortable for right now."

Not one to disobey orders, Perceptor sighed and nodded in defeat, patting the femme's other hand as if to apologize. She was gripping the metal table tightly, unsure of whether or not to trust the red mech's sudden change in demeanor.

She decided it was better to trust him, and taking the wordless apology, sat up straight again with the same curiosity as before, optics now rotating amongst the other bots in the tiny room.

"You really fire on all cylinders, don't ya, kid?" Wheeljack commented, stepping back to give her more room to look at the things around her.

Ratchet made an amusing "Hmph," before turning around and leaving the med bay. "Watch her," he ordered to no one in particular as he exited the room, no doubt to find an area to recharge.

After a few minutes of debate over who would watch the newly sparked femme, Optimus finally grew annoyed and placed Prowl and Perceptor on the first watch.

That evening, Prowl studied the femme scrupulously from another medical table, recording her every movement. Despite being a skilled tactician, even he had to admit he was enjoying his new project. At the moment, she was staring at her hand, flexing her digits curiously. The second-in-command could see the joy in her expressions despite all logic going against her having that ability.

Prowl, though he would never betray his stoic face in times like this, could not help but smile to himself at the young femme's naïveté. She sat relatively still, silently obeying Perceptor's instructions. Occasionally she would catch Prowl's gaze, smiling slightly at the second-in-command before returning her attention to the scientist.

The femme decided she liked the company of the two, though she was still unsure of whether or not the red scientist was completely trustworthy.

Perceptor felt the same, if not more nervous around the new creation. Just as it was weeks ago when she was nothing but a spark, the energy that circulated around her weighed on him, slowing the movements in his body and subduing his most pressing instincts. Every diode, every impulse in his processor told him something was different, something was wrong, about this spark, but his body could not bring itself to respond accordingly.

His mind began to wander, going through every sort of explanation and algorithm his large processor could come up with. Perceptor was just about the last bot to dwell on the theoretical topics. For him, anything and everything could be explained through science. Everything had to have an answer, even if that meant reducing the problem down to its smallest components. There was nothing that could not be solved without some critical thinking.

The scientist carefully flipped switches and moved cables around the femme's helm, trying everything he could to convince himself that the readings he was getting were simply due to an error, and not the real thing. Something had to change. Something had to prove he was right.

Where did the programming come from? It had to be a Decepticon scientist. Perceptor did a check for codes commonly used by their scientists. No match.

How did she survive this long without a body? Maybe the spark was processed and modified in a factory … No, that was impossible. The last spark-producing factory on Cybertron was destroyed a long time ago. Perceptor shuddered at the thought. No spark should ever be produced that way. The more he delved into the femme's young processor, the more he highlighted individual lines of code, the more he began to wonder if something else had slipped by the Autobots unnoticed.

Lacking an answer, he turned to Prowl, "Do you know of any underground factories producing sparks on Cybertron?"

Prowl barely looked up from his data pad, meticulously writing one of his many daily reports. The second-in-command shook his head, "If there were, they wouldn't be underground. And we'd be seeing a lot more bots like her," he motioned to the femme, who silently registered the words. The thoughts filed themselves away.

Perceptor did not reply, returning his attention to the screens before him. Now other questions, each more basic and broader than the last, ran through his processor.

How did her spark get here? All signs pointed to the Decepticons, but that was just the problem: where did they get the means to produce one? Sure, there were still plenty of Decepticons living on Cybertron, but the creation of new life on the desolate, war-torn planet had ended ages ago when the war first broke out. Factories that made processed sparks were gone. The youngest recorded spark, until now, was born at least four million years ago by Earth standards.

And then there was the problem with Optimus. Though the Autobot leader refused to admit anything, Perceptor's keen sense of awareness easily picked up on the Prime's discomfort whenever he was around the spark. It seemed to subside after it was given a body, but the leader's silence and preference to stay in the back of the room whenever the spark was present was too obvious to not be overlooked. The scientist was actually surprised Prowl had not picked up on it yet.

The disturbing activity in the Matrix should not have been ignored either. The pain Optimus was experiencing and the appearance of the spark, combined with the abnormal circumstances surrounding it, were too close together to be merely a coincidence. But that raised another question: Is it possible the Matrix knew something no one else did? And if that were the case, why would it say something now? Why would it disturb Optimus about a tiny spark when it never did a thing any other time? Certainly the rise of Megatron was alarming enough to be a problem, but the Matrix remained silent and detached throughout everything leading to his turn against the Autobots.

Something had to explain it all. Growing even more frustrated, the scientist typed in just about everything he could think of on his personal data pad. Something had to connect the femme's spark to something, anything. When Perceptor finally landed on a file, he paused.

"Hm," he muttered surprisingly, prompting Prowl to break his focus.

"What?" the second-in-command grumbled.

Perceptor hesitated for a moment, re-reading the file's name to be sure his processor was not playing tricks on him.

"Nothing. I just found something interesting."

"Interesting how?"

"Can you do me a favor?" Perceptor asked his superior, paying no attention to the previous question.

Prowl arched an optic ridge, "What do you need?"

"Can you use the _Ark_ 's computer to track energy signatures?"

It was Prowl's turn to hesitate, unsure of what the scientist was getting at, "Of course. Why?"

Without answering, Perceptor approached the femme. She still sat quietly on the medical table, listening as each mech spoke throughout the conversation though not quite understanding what it was they were talking about.

When Perceptor stood to face her, greenish-blue optics looking up into her electric blue ones (even sitting she was taller than him thanks to Ratchet's Aerialbot-like design), she frowned again, though this time it was more out of confusion than fear. In one quick motion, the scientist ordered her spark chamber to open. A glass panel moved out of the way, revealing the bright blue ball of energy nestled safely inside.

Ratchet had purposely designed the femme's spark chamber to sit higher in her chest than normal, partially because he had to re-design the frame several times and partially as a means for deception. The old medic's creativity proved perfect for Perceptor, as the spark, now at optic-level, was easy to access for what the scientist had in mind. Slowly, he produced a small needle. The femme immediately shrunk back, but a reassuring hand from Prowl on her shoulder calmed her nerves enough to let the red mech do his work.

Moving carefully so as not to harm her, Perceptor drew a small bit of plasma from the spark and carried it over to the computer. The femme instinctively closed her chamber, noting how Prowl physically relaxed once the energy she produced was cut off from circulating throughout the room.

Removing his hand from her shoulder, the second-in-command approached the computer and its operator. "What are you trying to do with this?"

Perceptor made a noise that sounded like a chuckle as he emptied the syringe's contents onto a slide. He produced a cable, inserting one end into the med bay's massive central computer and the other end into his own arm before transforming.

"Would you be a friend and help me out, Prowl?" the scientist, now in the shape of a human microscope (albeit a ridiculously large one), called out to the second-in-command.

"Will you answer my question?" Prowl retorted, placing the slide of blue plasma on the microscope's stage. For a moment, he could have sworn he saw a hint of purple flecks dispersed throughout the electric blue gel, but elected to ignore it.

Perceptor focused his lenses, allowing the data that ran through his processor to appear on the computer. The code ran across the screen at an alarming pace as the scientist searched for the exact data he needed.

"I'm trying to see if anything similar to her energy signature has appeared before. Sometimes these things are tracked and recorded, other times they can be used to locate the hot spot from which they originated. If we can find something, we might be able to get an idea of where she came from."

The computer screen faced away from the femme, but she was too distracted by the red bot's ability to change shape to care. Could she do that? She tried to picture herself changing shape, but nothing happened. Twisting her mouth into a frown, she refocused her optics on the two bots before her. They seemed to pay her no mind, each focusing intently on the screen.

After Perceptor had skimmed through every bit of code he found, a large chart appeared before him on the screen. Transforming and placing the slide on the table, he leaned closer, typing furiously whenever he saw something worth noting. Prowl quietly observed his process, recording several series of words as they crossed the screen and layers of the chart were stripped down to its basic layout.

It was a star chart, mapping every planet, system, and galaxy in the known universe. But even with the miraculous display, Perceptor only grew more frustrated when the thing he was searching for did not appear. Without a word, the scientist reached for the needle, grasping it firmly as he leveled it at his own chest.

"What are you doing?" Prowl snapped, but he was too slow to stop Perceptor from opening his own spark chamber and piercing the blue ball of energy inside. Grunting from the discomfort, he withdrew the syringe and watched closely as the energized plasma swirled around inside.

Without a word, Perceptor injected the solution into the plasma from the femme's spark and once more looked to the computer screen. Tiny blue clusters began to appear in random places throughout the chart, each indicating a recorded appearance or a detection of a stray energy signature composed of material similar in composition to the femme's spark.

"One thing's for sure," Perceptor murmured, zooming in on the Alpha Centauri system, the solar system Cybertron was a part of, "Her spark is definitely Cybertronian, but it has traces of material that alter her signature entirely."

"What does that mean?" Prowl asked.

"I can't even detect it on our tracers without using my own essence," he replied, "Meaning that while she exhibits Cybertronian code, she needs pure Cybertronian essence to highlight those qualities. Without it, she's as good as invisible to our systems."

"Brilliant," Prowl grumbled ironically, a part of him attempting to figure out if Decepticons had mastered radar invisibility, "So where else in the universe do we find a hot spot that produces Cybertronian sparks no one can track?"

"I don't think it's necessarily a hot spot we're dealing with here," Perceptor suggested, "Nor from a factory, for that matter." The scientist typed an instruction into the computer, this time slower and more deliberate. "There's some spark essence following her energy signature here, probably referring to her. There's none on Cybertron, meaning that it is likely she was sparked elsewhere. But the good thing here is that anything Cybertronian that has ever existed has our very essence in it. That essence is always susceptible to being reformatted or tainted by things living beyond the planet to the point where it becomes unrecognizable. She's definitely one of us, no doubt, but her unique energy signature indicates that her spark came from another source. That explains the strange energy and abnormal conditions she has survived in for so long."

Prowl had to admit that he had also felt uncomfortable around the spark ever since it was brought on board the _Ark_. The negative energy bothered him more than it should have. The hypersensitivity that made him a fantastic forensics officer before the war had also become his worst enemy over the past few weeks, tormenting his circuits to the point of having to step out of the med bay several times mid-conversation the moment he so much as looked at the source of his uneasiness. Seeing what the computer displayed and hearing Perceptor's rambling theories only deepened the uncertainty growing in the second-in-command's processor.

"What's that cluster there?" Prowl pointed to a small speck far beyond the Alpha Centauri system.

Perceptor paused to look at the speck. It was small, but being the only other hint of energy even remotely close to the femme's peaked his interest. "That might be where she's from," he commented, "It's a recorded date, though, so it's not very current."

"Still, that could point to something," Prowl insinuated.

"True," Perceptor highlighted the speck, praying to a force he never believed in that this would give him and the second-in-command the answers they sought.

He immediately regretted the prayer when the file opened.

He didn't want to believe it. In the millions of years he had been alive, he could have wished for any answer in the world. Hell, he probably would have wished for no answer at all if he had known the answer was this.

The blue femme, who had been sitting quietly the entire time, titled her head when two pairs of horrified optics met hers. Perceptor's entire body stiffened, face neutral, but for some reason, she could see beyond it. She could see the gaping confusion, the terror, and the processor reeling faster than even one like his should. What did she do that made him panic?

Even Prowl, the normally expressionless second-in-command, could not stop himself from narrowing his optics, glance darting between the blue femme and the screen.

No words passed between the two Autobots who looked on. Perceptor, with his gaze never leaving the motionless femme, handed his personal data pad to Prowl, the device showing the file he had pulled up earlier. The second briefly looked at it then darted out of the room, never once stopping to look back.

Perceptor remained still, eyeing the femme as she wrung her hands together nervously. The scientist desperately tried to remind himself that this was just a nervous tick of hers and nothing more.

It took a few minutes for Prowl to return with Optimus, Jazz, Wheeljack, and a very displeased Ratchet, but even after Perceptor had company once again, he could not fully shake the pain his spark felt in the femme's presence.

* * *

Perceptor had gotten used to the unsettling feeling he felt in his spark whenever he was around the femme as time went on. It took a long time though, especially after the events that transpired the night she was sparked. Since then, he was never quite able to look at her the way he did the moment she first came online.

He carried with him the memory of something now only he and Jazz knew, the other four Autobots having died a long time ago. But even as time went on, the knowledge had never ceased being so important, so critical, so classified. He kept it to himself, then. After all this time, not a single spark, save Jazz, knew about it. Not even the femme knew.

In the aftermath of it all, nothing changed. The spark lived.

She was given a name. Ratchet had actually enjoyed Wheeljack's comment, using it to come up with a name he felt rather attached to until the day his spark returned to the Well.

He named her Cylinder.

The femme, though still without a vocal processor, seemed to like the newfound identity. And when she finally could speak, she made sure everyone knew exactly who she was.

Perceptor smiled a little at the thought. The only reason he could give as to why it resurfaced was probably because he had found himself conversing with the gray dragoness claiming to be Cylinder's friend. While the femme neither affirmed nor denied the declaration, Perceptor decided to treat it as fact. Primus knew she needed someone that could tolerate her.

The heir to the Galactic Guardian, as the scientist had learned in their conversation, reminded him a lot of the femme in her younger years. Kind, upbeat, naïve, and unbelievably curious were just a few words he used to describe Cylinder when discussing his peculiar "artificial spark experiment," as Prowl had called it, with the Cybertronian scientific community. Now those words manifested themselves in the personality of Silver, while what used to describe Cylinder no longer applied to the present day.

He knew as well as anyone the emotional hell the femme had gone through, but he, like the rest of Cybertron, was powerless to console her. Now, more than ever, did he wish he could go back and change that. Maybe then they would not be in this mess of a fight on this mess of a planet no one had asked for.

Eventually, the sky grew dark, and satisfied with the day's work, he sent the two females away to give them both some time to relax and wander in the fresh air. He would work on Cylinder's minor injuries in the morning.

The air outside was still misty. Nighttime was approaching, but the torches lining the path of the rebuilding Syandemel provided plenty of light for the two. Even in the wake of the devastation, the city was still bustling. Dragons everywhere moved stones, constructed new bridges and canals, and erected new buildings. Even the Grand Temple was upgraded.

Much of this was aided by the arrival of Autobots whose sole careers were based on architecture. As soon as they arrived in the Dragon Realms, they immediately sought out those in charge of the building projects, eagerly lending any piece of knowledge they could relating to their craft to the bewildered dragons.

As the late evening sky began to drizzle, Silver found herself trotting into every puddle she could find, ungracefully splashing around to see just how deep they were. Some of the puddles were a result from the footprints of bots with even bigger feet than Cylinder's attempting to traverse the loose and muddy fields surrounding the city.

The sense of the overwhelming size of the other Autobots made Silver think.

"Aren't you worried about another attack?" she asked Cylinder, who had been quietly walking just ahead of the dragoness.

"Of course," Cylinder replied, turning her head downward towards Silver, who was covered in mud up to her chest plates. "Wherever there's energon you can be sure the Decepticons will be there."

"What about Marchosias?"

Cylinder did not immediately reply. The memory of his release still burned inside her processor. Even when she tried to file it away, the Voice always found it, reminding her of everything she had done.

She released him. She did it, and no one else, not even the Voice, helped her. She chose what had ultimately brought Syandemel to the situation it was in now, always on edge, waiting for the day when the lights finally went out. And it was all because of her.

The thought only haunted her more when Silver began to speak about it. The young gray dragoness, though growing in maturity every day with the gravity of the threat that had returned to her world, was still far too innocent to be ruined by the knowledge Cylinder held.

The femme knew beyond any doubts that if Silver found out what the Autobot she trusted did, she would never recover. The dragoness had dealt with enough betrayal and loss in her life. There was no reason to add more fuel to the already growing fire.

"Maybe," Cylinder finally said, attempting to change the subject, "Have you spoken with your father lately?"

Silver frowned, slowing her pace a little, tail flicking anxiously. "No. He said he would help me get better at Galactic, but then he just up and left. 'Business to take care of,' he said. I don't know when he's coming back."

Cylinder nodded, continuing her pace as Silver trotted behind. The dragoness had grown accustomed to the large metal forms that protected her planet. It made her feel inexplicably safe. Even with Cylinder missing half of her armor and her swords, the weapons she was most skilled with, Silver had no fear of being harmed by others when she was around the Aerialbot.

"Whenever he does come back," she continued, folding her massive wings against her back, "I know it's going to turn the tide. There's no way Marchosias, and the Decepticons for that matter, would ever think of invading when you guys and the Galactic Dragons are here to stand guard."

Cylinder pressed her mouth in a firm line to refrain from blurting out her doubts, but found that the Voice was much more interested in what she had to say than she herself was.

"I really wish it were that simple."


	2. Chapter 2 - The Scapegoats

Chapter 2 – The Scapegoats

The first thing she remembered was a flash of light. The force from the blast that accompanied it was enough to knock her down, the light blinding, and the sound it made deafening, pounding against her skull in a way she had never experienced before. Then it repeated itself, over and over and over.

"Stop," she wanted to say, but her mouth was unable to utter the thought. Her body was plastered to the blood-soaked earth.

"Please … don't do this," she tried to say a little louder, but still the words failed to make it past her lips.

What started as a sequence of thoughts that probably should have been kept to themselves but were instead spoken aloud ended with words that refused to come out no matter how hard she tried to force them.

The next thing she remembered was being pulled away. She fought desperately against forces she could not see, refusing to take her eyes off the blinding flashes. Tears rolled down her cheeks, though she was not sure if they were from her shock or the pain the light brought to her sensitive eyes. She clawed at the muddy, uneven ground, gnashed her teeth, and beat her wings in hopes of removing whoever was holding her, but they remained firm.

"We need to go," she heard one of them say, tone desperate.

She knew the tone all too well. It was the kind of tone one would use when implying that she would be next to fall victim to those flashes if she did not move.

Finally, her voice found its bearings, emitting a piercing scream that penetrated the heavy air, slowing the pace of the flashes momentarily before being picked up again.

 _They were supposed to be our protectors_ , she thought, eyes darting frantically to find someone she knew would agree with her. But in every eye that looked back she only saw coldness and hatred.

It was not until a blue form stepped between her and the bursts of light did the calamity finally cease. But it was already too late. The damage had been done, and now bodies, mangled and distorted beyond recognition in the carnage, sat lifelessly in a smoldering heap of flesh and bone.

* * *

 _Earlier._

Another day yielded another round of painful repairs. Cylinder gripped the medical table tightly, body tensing from the electric jolts in her back. The sting of the welding torch, coupled with the erratic movement of electricity into new circuits forced her to dig her fingers into the already dented metal slab beneath her.

Silver watched the scene quietly, face twisted in concern for the Aerialbot. She cringed and looked away every time Perceptor stuck a metal tool into the vast array of wires and metal parts. Though the dragoness understood the necessity of these repairs, the sight of the scientist's careful yet deliberate movements made her sick.

Cylinder felt the same, though her focus was grabbed more by the feeling in her back rather than what it looked like to the dragoness. For any Aerialbot, the most sensitive part of the body had to be the back, the place where the most important part of the frame typically resided in robot form. Wings, the equipment that made flyers, flyers, naturally had the vital sensors needed to give their wearer the necessary functions of a flyer. The downside of that was the pain and sensitivity that came with it whenever they were damaged or needed repairs.

Outside the rain pounded against the stone buildings. Though the sound was soothing to the otherwise agitated femme, the sheer amount of rainfall made everyone else uneasy. Since the fire that burned nearly half the city down only a few weeks ago, large portions of Syandemel were left empty and susceptible to flooding, halting most of the rebuilding projects altogether. The Autobots and water dragons did the best they could to redirect the currents, but as the storms passed through, for the sake of everyone's safety, the guardians ordered a halt on any further projects.

A loud snap regained Cylinder's attention. The pain in her back instantly ceased and was replaced by a large amount of weight. As her body registered the latest equipment addition, the Aerialbot relaxed, releasing the table from her grip.

For the first time in weeks, Cylinder gently flexed her wings, allowing her body to adjust to the familiar feeling of the once absent appendages. Behind them were the rest of the parts that composed her cockpit and the majority of her airframe. Though the pressure caused by the newly introduced weight made it difficult to stretch, Cylinder welcomed it. Finally she felt whole again.

"Well that should do it," Perceptor mused, placing his tools to the side. As Cylinder stood up, he moved to the corner of the room, producing two long, thin blades. Without a word, he handed the swords to the femme. At the touch of her hands, a jolt of electricity shot through them, producing a bright blue color, before they were sheathed in place behind her back.

"Now don't go running into trees any time soon, alright?" Perceptor chuckled, patting the femme's newly repaired shoulder. There was a serious undertone to his command, considering the extent of the damage her wings had received when she crashed.

"No promises," she retorted flatly.

Perceptor ignored Cylinder's unenthusiastic response and shifted his attention to the other bot in the room. The unusually silent form leaned against the wall, arms folded with a bright blue crystal in his large hands.

Rodimus' injuries from the battle had been fully repaired weeks ago, but that did not stop him from lingering about the makeshift medical facility. His hovering over Perceptor's every action had begun to wear on the scientist, though he understood full well his leader's anxiety.

The appearance of the blue crystal in Rodimus' hand, something Perceptor had gotten used to handling during its time on Cybertron, was new. Rodimus gingerly handed it to the scientist.

"Now that you're done with that," he muttered, gesturing to Cylinder, who had taken a seat by Silver to stretch, "I'd like you to take a deeper look into this."

Perceptor sighed inwardly, turning the crystal around in his hands, "As you can see," he spoke to Silver, "My work never ends."

"Sounds like you enjoy it, though," the dragoness replied, tail flicking curiously as she eyed the glowing object. Perceptor nodded in agreement.

"There are still a lot of questions we have," Rodimus continued, the optimism in his voice strangely lacking. Though he had also suffered from severe energon loss like Cylinder, his strength and alertness did not make an immediate rebound like hers did once fresh energon was re-introduced into his system. His apprehension since the battle and the femme's revelation about her role in freeing Marchosias had worn him out, resulting in many days without rest.

Perceptor placed the gem on the medical table, shifting into his alt-mode to get a closer look. Nearby sat a stack data pads the scientist had been using. On them Cylinder's cybernetic code still covered the screens. Without touching them, the codes on display shifted to something different. Random lines and dots that Silver could not understand began to appear.

The dragoness titled her head, absentmindedly chewing her tail as she moved closer to Cylinder. The femme sat motionless, too concerned with what Silver was doing to pay much attention to Perceptor's work and Rodimus' curiosity. Though the dragoness could not have possibly known, in Cylinder's mind, this was the worst place she could be sitting.

The guilt the femme felt towards freeing Marchosias surrounded her every action short of actually admitting it to anyone but Rodimus. The closer Silver got to Cylinder, the more worried the femme became about her finding out the truth. And the dragoness was coming to trust her at an alarming rate. What would she think if she knew the femme was the one responsible for freeing the monster that held her captive for years, tormented her even long after she escaped?

Cylinder tried not to think about it as she looked back towards Perceptor. The scientist had since shifted back into his normal form, turning the crystal around a few more times.

"You said in your notes that the crystal contains radio waves, Cylinder?" he asked.

"That's what it looked like," she replied.

Perceptor made a noise of understanding. He held the energon up towards the light from the window, optics scrutinizing each scratch on the glassy surface. The scientist furrowed his brown, glancing between Cylinder's notes and the crystal as if expecting answers to flood his processor.

"Radio waves," he muttered absentmindedly before placing the crystal on the floor. "Rodimus," he motioned to the Autobot leader, whose arms were still folded in contemplation as he stood silently in the corner. "Would you do me a favor?"

Without asking for the scientist to clarify, Rodimus stepped forward. The Autobot leader was not quite sure what Perceptor had planned, but decided to trust his experimentation. His agitation over just what the energon was had worn on him long enough.

In one swift motion, Perceptor broke the energon in half. He set one piece to the side and raised his foot over the other, crushing it with little effort, allowing the mist to rise from its shattered remains. He briskly stepped backwards to avoid the smoke that attracted itself to his leader's metal form like a magnet, watching in awe as his very physical being changed before his optics.

Rodimus had to admit that he had missed his dragon form. Though he felt safer as a Cybertronian, his organic form flooded his sensors with a variety of different feelings that his metal shell could not quite pick up nor cared to detect. He titled his head towards the dome of the building, taking in the smell of the rainy air outside. The cold breeze that had blown in made him shiver in place as he pressed his short wings against his back and wrapped his tail around the base of his legs for comfort.

There was something so fascinating about these organic bodies. While they had their obvious weaknesses, they made up for it with their wide range of sensitivity to the environment they lived in. Rodimus had actually come to envy the organic life forms he knew – their ability to experience so much more than the average transformer made him long for the same feeling. What came as natural to them made him more and more curious the more he learned about what his own organic form had come to offer.

Despite enjoying returning to dragon form, Rodimus' serious expression never left his face (though he was sure Cylinder was the only one to notice the difference). "What're you looking for, Perceptor?"

The scientist hesitated for a moment. He took a seat against the wall, placing his chin on his hand as he thought.

"Nothing in particular," he finally said, "I just want to get an idea of what I'm dealing with here. You look nothing like yourself at all. If I didn't know any better, I would have passed you off as just another native."

Perceptor's statement received a snort from Silver, who was standing on her toes to watch the scientist work. When he broke his concentration to look at her, she shrunk back in embarrassment, grabbing hold of her tail once more.

"He's not mad," Cylinder assured her quietly.

"Not at all," Perceptor continued, "Did you have something you wanted to add?"

Silver looked to Cylinder, waiting for her to nod. "I was just thinking," she spoke carefully so as not to offend the scientist, "From an actual native's perspective, Rodimus and Cylinder always looked a little weird as dragons … Like they didn't quite fit, I guess."

"Because of their mannerisms and lack of exposure to your culture?" Perceptor suggested, but the dragoness shook her head.

"No, they just looked … different. Like not what normal dragons look like." She lowered her head and twisted her mouth into a frown, tail flicking anxiously. "They sort of … looked like they came straight out of an old mural."

"What does that mean?" Rodimus tilted his head. The taller dragoness shuffled in place, trying to find the right words to explain her thoughts.

"You both looked very … ancient, or primitive. Like," she looked around, "Dragons that lived a long time ago when there were few mixed breeds and nothing too complex in appearance like me. When I first met you guys, I sort of waived it off because I thought you were from an isolated tribe, so your genetic variation probably wasn't as diverse as it would be in Syandemel. But knowing what you are now," she instinctively grabbed her tail again, muffling her words, "I'm just as confused as before."

"So basically," Perceptor stood up and grabbed the closest data pad, "What you're saying is that they don't look like normal dragons by today's standards, but more or less like your ancestors?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Silver nodded. She turned to Cylinder, noticing the femme's narrowed optics. They did not seem to be that way out of anger, but more confusion, as if the femme had once again lost herself in a mixture of the dragoness' words and her own thoughts.

The room felt silent again as Perceptor shut off his optics. Silver grimaced at the sight. Though Cylinder had done it many times in her presence, the dragoness still had trouble grasping how anyone could leave their eyes open but shut them at the same time. She resumed biting her tail, electing to look elsewhere.

Without looking back up, Perceptor spoke, "You said that the shrine you were taken to had ancient Cybertronian written on the walls?"

"We think so," Cylinder replied, picturing the lines of primitive script that completely covered the stone surfaces inside.

The shrine room was located deep inside one of Syandemel's many mountainous caverns, locked away from the public and cared for by the guardians. Only Aesir, the Fire Guardian, could use it the way it was meant to by utilizing his element to illuminate the ancient artifacts inside. Though the room itself was beautiful and alluring in its own right, it was the objects inside that the Autobots were most concerned with.

In addition to the writing on the walls that glowed an electric blue when fire came into contact with its sole torch, the ceiling also boasted an abundance of colorful lights. But instead of writing, tiny dots peppered its surface, resembling stars. What continued to baffle the Autobots was that these stars seemed to take the form of a pattern, but not one that could be seen here in the Dragon Realms. Instead, it was the view one would see from Iacon, the Autobot headquarters on Cybertron.

To add to the list of confusing things, the statues inside that the guardians found themselves praying to more and more lately depicted five dragons – the original guardians – and five mechanical beings behind them. Not even the scholars that had arrived from Cybertron could understand the point of these statues, concluding only that Cybertronians had clearly visited this planet once before and that they had apparently made a large enough impact for their memory to be immortalized in stone beneath Syandemel, though it was definitely a long time ago. The presence of energon deposits beneath the city further strengthened the theory, though it did nothing to explain why it existed in the first place.

Perceptor had not been fortunate enough to see the room yet. His work on Cylinder and Rodimus' injuries occupied most of his time, and his fascination with the organic matter throughout the city kept him plenty distracted. Even for a bot that had once spent many cycles on Earth, organic planets continued to captivate him. The fact that there were creatures that could control the very compounds of this planet made him even more excited to learn as much as he could before he was sent back to Iacon, however long that may take.

The silence abruptly ended when Perceptor began to laugh, optics flickering back on. "I get it now," he mused, grabbing the remaining piece of energon and tossing it to Rodimus.

The other two Autobots in the room sat quietly, unable to comprehend the scientist's thought process.

"It's holomatter," he explained, "Or at least, an early attempt at holomatter. But instead of projection like what we have now, the energon changes your very cybernetic makeup to help you stay disguised on this planet."

"Holo– what now?" Silver interjected.

"Holomatter," Rodimus replied calmly, a spark of energy brightening his expression, "It's a camouflage tactic Cybertronians developed to stay disguised on organic planets."

Silver hesitated, head reeling from the new information, "But … isn't that what your 'vehicle'–things are for?"

"Yes," Cylinder answered for her leader, also sitting up straighter with the revelation, "But what do we do on planets where nothing mechanical exists?" When Silver could not produce an answer, the femme continued, "It works like this."

Without moving, a figure suddenly materialized in the room next to Rodimus, reaching just below his jaw. The figure wore a blue uniform and had short brown hair with dark gray eyes. It did not move but stared blankly ahead at the wall.

Silver's mouth hung open, though it was more out of disgust than intrigue.

"This is what the life forms on that planet we've been telling you about look like," Rodimus spoke up, admiring the realistic nature of Cylinder's projection. He had to admit to himself his surprise that the femme had chosen this human as her avatar – a slightly aged-up version of a girl the Autobots had known during their time on Earth.

"Though we hardly used them," Cylinder continued, "That planet had plenty of technology for us to disguise ourselves with."

There was another pause before Silver finally spoke, "That's creepy."

"It was weird for us too," Perceptor chuckled, "But essentially what ancient Cybertronian scientists seemed to be doing here was create a substance that could not only act as a portable spacebridge, but could also use those same properties to alter the physical makeup of its user so that they could blend in here. Projection of our organic disguises obviously developed much later. But with this energon, it seems that it's unstable – the greater the amount, the greater the reaction, which is why a portal sometimes forms and other times won't."

Cylinder carefully followed the scientist's rant, nodding as her own thoughts about the energon began to make sense. "Starscream did say the energon was meant to send its user to a neutral planet for refuge. Makes sense that it would help them hide in plain sight, especially if Cybertronians were the ones using it," Cylinder muttered, recalling the interrogation in Syandemel's prison.

"He did?" Perceptor asked dubiously, optic ridge arched. The Decepticon Seeker's name had not come up once since repairing Cylinder's pierced wing. After that, the femme refused to speak of the Decepticons.

"Yeah," Rodimus replied, "The energon was a product of the War of the Thirteen according to him." He could feel his chest vibrate uncomfortably at the mention of the war. Was that the Matrix? Or some organic equivalent?

Discomfort growing, the Autobot leader smashed the other half of the crystal in his paw, allowing the mist to engulf his body. He stood in awe as the red, scaly skin melded back into painted metal parts. The wings and tail disappeared, replaced by machinery. For one moment, Rodimus was content to return to his metal shell until a sharp pain shot through his processor and he stumbled to the floor.

Had Cylinder not been paying attention, the taller femme would have never caught him before he hit the ground. Her body and processor, meticulously designed and linked together by Ratchet, gave her unbelievably fast reflexes that made Silver jump when she realized the Aerialbot was suddenly no longer sitting next to her.

"What was that about?" Cylinder gasped, body struggling to support Rodimus' dead weight as he lay limp in her arms, unable to move.

"I … I don't know," he managed to mumble, grasping his helm.

Perceptor assisted in guiding the dazed mech over to the medical table while simultaneously flipping open a circuit panel to connect his data pad. In an instant the Autobot leader's code appeared on the screen.

The familiar instinct of a medic got the better of Cylinder, reminding her too much of her job as Ratchet's assistant on Earth. Part of her wanted to believe the Voice had to do with it, but her sentiment seemed too natural to be forced by something else.

"Are you alright?" she asked as tenderly as she could, optics already scanning his processor.

"What?" Rodimus perked up, dazed expression suddenly gone, "Yeah, why?"

Cylinder stepped back, wings lowering slightly, "I've just never seen you do that after changing back before."

The Autobot leader fumbled for the right words to say, grumbling at Perceptor's sudden interference in his personal space. "Yeah, Cyl, I'm fine. Really," he added.

The femme was not convinced, folding her arms. Perceptor mused to himself how much she looked like Ratchet – a medic that never took the typical "I'm fine" seriously – before returning to his data pad.

"No, you're not fine," she replied bluntly, optics glowing brighter than normal. Your processor is moving way too fast, even for you."

The sound of a large crack filled the room. Perceptor was staring straight at Cylinder, optics wide, and fingers tightly gripping the now broken screen of his data pad. The red scientist's horrified expression left him unable to produce words.

"It's fine," she answered his silent question calmly, "He knows." Perceptor did not immediately reply, optics still widened in a state of shocked silence.

"Knows what?" Silver asked from behind the three Autobots. The dragoness had since regained her breath from the shock of how quickly the incident had played out, and now stood with her head titled to one side between them.

"Whether he knows or not is none of my concern," Perceptor replied sternly, ignoring Silver's question. His normally gentle tone was completely gone, and the sudden shift made Silver shrink against the wall. There was another pause before he continued, this time slower and more deliberate, "You didn't even touch him."

Silver tried to grab someone's attention, but the three Autobots' sharp focus on each other left the dragoness completely unnoticed.

Rodimus raised his hand to interject, "Hold on, you're telling me that at one point, she _had_ to?"

"The ability just developed over time, Perceptor," Cylinder waved both mechs out of her face, "Don't worry about it."

"Worry about what?!" Silver shouted. The temperature in the room dropped enough to register on the Autobots' internal sensors, forcing them to turn their attention towards her. Bursts of icy air emanated from her breath as she panted in exasperation

"Cylinder's large optics I was telling you about," Perceptor replied flatly, gaze still fixed on the femme, "Are designed that way to support the technology in her helm that allows her to read and interface with other technological equipment, Cybertronians included … telepathically, apparently." The last part was uttered dryly as the scientist narrowed his own optics in disgust.

"Perceptor," Cylinder sighed, "You have nothing to worry about, I promise–"

"You _read_ minds?" Silver interrupted, tail flicking in excitement, "Can you read me?"

"Not a good time," Rodimus whispered to the gray dragoness, inching himself away from being in between the heated glares his subordinates were giving each other.

Without turning her head, Cylinder answered, "No, I can't. It only works on machinery. And it's fine, Perceptor."

"Fine," Perceptor mimicked her tone condescendingly, pacing around the room. His conflicted expressions struggled to suppress his disbelief and rage. He knew the femme was always a free spirit and that much of his teachings would be lost on her, but for so long he believed that she had actually listened to him for once, only to find that not even that was a promise kept.

"Yes, fine," he continued. "And Ratchet said it was fine when we first found out about this and rather than suppressing the urge to use it like we all told you, you've been using it anyway. You've used it so much that now you have the ability to tamper with something with a single glance."

"Hey," Cylinder's voice rose defensively, "It's not like I'm using it to hurt anyone."

"You could."

"Excuse me?"

Seeing the situation start to spiral out of control, Rodimus stood, but was cut off by Perceptor's sharp tone, "Does anyone beside these two know?"

"No," Cylinder stated firmly, optics directed at Silver to make sure she understood. The dragoness, tail blade in mouth, nodded her head furiously.

Perceptor made a noise of approval before turning around, flexing his fingers to release his tension.

"Perceptor," Cylinder continued, voice softer this time, "I'm not reckless. I don't use it all the time. It's mostly for communication. Rarely even defense."

The scientist turned once more, arms folded, mouth pressed into a firm line. His optics told a different story – one of sadness and fear. Though he always had a weird way to showing it, Perceptor truly cared for the femme the same way the other Autobots did. To see a being he helped create behave this way troubled him greatly, though he hated to admit that part of his concern was rooted in things he knew about her from the day she was sparked – things no one else ever needed to know.

"Rodimus," he spoke without breaking his gaze, "Don't use the energon anymore. It's tampering with your circuitry and affecting your code. Changing your physical form is taking a toll on you faster than it should. We should conserve what we have anyway."

Rodimus nodded, praying to nothing in particular that the tense feeling in the room would cease. Silver had taken to biting her wings nervously, tail curled tightly against her body.

Though the rain continued to pound against the building, drowning out much of the noise outside and alleviating the silence that permeated the air, a few shouts managed to reach Cylinder's audios. Silver jumped when the femme turned suddenly and moved to the nearest window.

"What now?" Rodimus asked.

Silver could also hear the shouts over the rain, though she had no idea where they were coming from. Cautiously, she sniffed the air, frowning when no unordinary scent crossed her path.

Cylinder peered out the window and activated her long-distance vision, but nothing strange crossed her line of sight. She scanned the valley that overlooked the entrance to the city, still devastated by the battle between her, Rodimus, and Starscream, though at the very least standing once more. The only thing she could see through the fog were a group of dragons and some Autobots. It took another glance to notice that the Autobots were standing amongst the dragons, pushing some of them away.

That was when a loud ping echoed in Rodimus' personal radio.

The Autobot leader jumped off the table, scrambling to answer the call. On the other end, Ultra Magnus barked furiously.

"Easy, Magnus, what's wrong?" Rodimus held his helm as the background noise interfered with most of what his second-in-command was shouting, producing a strange ringing sound.

"What is it?" Silver asked nervously, fearing the answer. Dark Forces? Decepticons?

Rodimus could barely make out the second-in-command's words, but they were enough to convince him that something needed to be done. "I'll be there in a few," he replied firmly to Ultra Magnus before turning to Silver.

"A fight broke out in the marketplace," he answered. The Autobot leader produced his blaster from his subspace and cocked it. He turned to leave when Silver placed her body in front of his.

"What does that mean?" she asked, a hint of desperation in her voice. Rodimus was too dense to see Silver's anxiety. He was not there when she told Cylinder about her past, how she was a prisoner of the Dark Forces, so there was no way he could understand the panic in her voice like the Aerialbot behind him could.

"Not sure," he answered as carefully as he could, "Magnus said there were basilisks involved."

Both Silver and Cylinder stared in disbelief. Tensions had been high between the dragons and the basilisks, the shape shifting creatures that shared their genealogy with Marchosias, since the guardians had allowed them to stay within the city's walls. Before, their relationship to the Commander of Darkness, though long severed, had branded them as evil and undesirable, and they were forbidden from living amongst Syandemel's dragon inhabitants who wanted nothing to do with any reminders of their kin. Their assistance in saving inhabitants when the Decepticons engulfed the city in flames changed the guardians' minds, but the stigmas amongst the public remained.

Until this point, nothing of significance had come of the tension, which explained the dragoness' confusion when Rodimus spoke. The basilisks had been so kind, though. Why now?

"Fine," Cylinder muttered, stepping forward, "Let's stop it before anyone gets hurt."

"Hang on, Cyl," Rodimus put his hand up to prevent the femme from continuing, "Let the others take care of it. You're still recovering."

"I just got fixed," she scoffed, "I'm ready to go."

"Actually, Cylinder," Perceptor spoke up, "I agree with Rodimus. You should sit this one out."

Cylinder wheeled around, face conveying her feeling of betrayal.

"There may be wounded Autobots," the scientist continued in hopes of lifting her spirits, "They need a medic's hands for the job."

"Then maybe you should have brought another medic with you," she snapped. Seeing both Perceptor and Rodimus' firm expressions made it clear that they would not budge. She grumbled something in Cybertronian – they had been speaking in the Dragon Realms' native language so Silver could follow along – before retreating to the unoccupied medical table, flexing her fingers to prepare for any repair work that may need to be done.

With nothing else to say, Rodimus and Silver quickly left the room to asses what was going on. Cylinder watched as the dragoness tripped over her own tail before breaking into a sprint for the center of the commotion. Perceptor put his tools together, preparing for the worst, like normal.

Sadly, this was not the first time Cylinder was forced to stay behind and care for the wounded. Though she had clearly proven herself as being more than capable of handling hand-to-hand combat, her medical training often made her much more valuable as someone who could help Ratchet. For many years on Earth, though Wheeljack and Perceptor knew how to repair bots, their scientific backgrounds gave them skills nowhere near those of medics, which was why Ratchet, and frankly, the rest of the _Ark_ 's crew, were grateful when Cylinder was trained to assist him whenever the wounded were brought to the medical bay.

The femme sat down on the table, allowing her optics to shut off while she awaited the call for help.

* * *

 _Earth, 1987_

The sudden noise of the alarm startled Ratchet out of his recharge. Once again, he had drifted into unconsciousness at his desk, lulled to sleep by the boring paperwork Prowl had been expecting.

"Damn," the medic grumbled as he held his helm, lowering the sensitivity in his audios to drown out the noise. That alarm only meant one thing: Decepticons were active. And whatever it was they were doing, someone was going to get hurt. Everyone knew that. Well, everyone except the _Ark_ 's newest member did.

The muffled sound of "Ratchet" managed to leak through the noise, prompting the disgruntled medic to turn around in his seat. Before him, a blue femme stood nervously, optics indicating her distress at the noise. Cylinder's vocal processor had finally been installed, and the discovery of her ability to speak left Ratchet both proud and somewhat annoyed. She liked to talk. A lot. Most of the time, she just had questions, which the medic was more than happy to answer, but sometimes she would just babble on about something completely random she learned about that day, prompting him to either drown her out through work or leave the room entirely to maintain his patience with the young bot.

"Don't worry," he said calmly, "There's been an attack by the Decepticons. We're going to go protect the humans they may be harming. It's very routine here … you'll get used to it, kid, I promise."

"You're going to stop the bad guys?" she asked timidly, optics shifting.

"Yep," he replied, rising to his feet to fetch his tools and prepare the medical bay for when the casualties returned. He nearly dropped them when he noticed the blue figure move for the door.

"And where do you think you're going?" he asked sternly, hands on his hips, blocking her path. Behind him, Autobots rushed by the open doors to prepare for mobilization.

Cylinder, though built taller than Ratchet, stood on her toes to peer over his shoulder, "To help?"

Ratchet laughed dryly, turning the femme around and walking her back towards the center of the room, "Not in that condition you're not. You haven't even begun training with a weapon, let alone the fact that you don't have your alt-mode yet."

"What does that mean?" There she went again with the questions. Sometimes it seemed like she never stopped.

"You're not ready yet, Cylinder," Ratchet said as kindly as he could, "But you will be someday. Now's just not the time."

"But Wheeljack said I'd be a good fighter," she reasoned.

"Well I'm not Wheeljack," the medic replied, patting her head in his way of showing affection.

Cylinder seemed to accept the words obediently, but made no effort to conceal her irritation. "What can I do, then?"

That question did not seem to bother Ratchet as much as the others. He thought about it, and then an idea came into his processor. Why make her sit patiently and take up space in a medical ward that would soon be packed with visitors? He quickly checked the roster of who was being assigned to this alert. Both Wheeljack and Perceptor were going, meaning that if both of them were hurt, Ratchet would be on his own to make repairs. Perfect.

"You can help me take care of the injured bots," he replied.

"Really?" Cylinder seemed to bounce at the words, body shaking in excitement. Finally she could feel important to the other Autobots. Though by now she had already met the entirety of the crew, since being sparked she always felt like she did not belong. Sometimes she would catch the others casting strange looks at her. It did not take a genius to see that her presence made them weary, though the reason for it she found difficult for her to understand.

Whatever the case, the opportunity to help Ratchet made her smile brightly. She gingerly handled every tool he gave to her as he ran her through the basics before the wounded started to pour in.

At first, Cylinder struggled to keep up with the medic's brisk pace and the calamity of several voices all shouting at once. But Ratchet's seasoned experience and calm demeanor allowed him to prioritize who needed to be taken care of first and how to execute each repair without any other distractions. All she had to do was follow along, producing whatever tool he asked for as she had already committed their names to memory.

As Ratchet made his rounds, he sighed in annoyance at the sight of Sideswipe, who sat on a table, body shaking from what he assumed was an electrical short.

"This right here is a good example of why you need training before you go fight," he turned to Cylinder, gesturing to the red mech behind him.

"I heard that," Sideswipe gritted his teeth, attempting to force his body to stop its spasms.

"What hit you?" Ratchet countered Sideswipe's sour tone with his own irritated response, forcing the much younger Autobot to look away in defeat.

"Null ray … Starscream," he replied between the electrical seizures.

Cylinder wanted to ask what a null ray was, though judging by how Sideswipe was behaving, she guessed it had something to do with his electrical systems.

"Do I even want to ask how you got that close to him?" Ratchet sighed at the mention of the Decepticon second-in-command, voice muffled by the palm on his face.

"Heh," Sideswipe replied proudly, "You should have seen me. He certainly didn't – not until I was on top of him anyways. He just got lucky." He winked at Cylinder, prompting the medic to give him a firm smack on the forehead.

"How many times do I have to tell you?" he growled, "Starscream doesn't miss. Ever. It was not lucky."

"Whatever," the younger mech replied, "Can you just figure out where the short is so I don't have to take up any more of your precious time?" He smiled innocently, but the condescension in his tone told another story.

Ratchet shook his head in annoyance before opening several panels, carefully moving from circuit board to circuit board to find where Sideswipe's electrical impulses were being blocked. Normally, a null ray would just shut off a bot's systems temporarily, but this time when the younger Autobot's systems rebooted themselves, one short-circuited, a clear indicator of a faulty board in need of repair.

Cylinder watched silently from a distance. She knew what a short was because Wheeljack had once told her how an electrical short in one of his inventions caused it to explode in his face. But as her optics roamed, she noticed something out of the ordinary. Though the panel had not yet been opened, it was obvious that the short was emanating from the left side Sideswipe's head. It sparked and jumped each time his body convulsed. So why was Ratchet not looking at it when it was so obvious where the problem was?

"But," she started, breaking her obedient silence, "The short is in his head. Do you have to check every panel before that one?"

Ratchet paused his movements to process her words. He slowly turned his head, optic ridge raised, "I'm checking every panel because I don't know where the short is. Why would you think it's in his head?"

It was Cylinder's turn to be confused. What was he talking about? The problem was so clearly there. She could see it as plain as day. How was Ratchet, an experienced doctor, missing it?

"I saw it in his head," she replied carefully, fearing she had angered her creator.

Ratchet briefly looked at Sideswipe, who, through his spasms, shrugged. The medic reached for the younger mech's head and opened the main access panel, making a strange noise once he looked inside.

Sure enough, a circuit board emitting sparks came into view. With a few careful movements, Ratchet soldered the frayed connections back together, and the spasms ceased.

"Did you design her with x-ray vision or something, Ratch?" Sideswipe asked self-consciously as the medic closed the panel.

"No," he replied slowly, turning his attention to the confused femme. He knew that something was off, and yet, he could not bring himself to figure out how else to respond to it.

By the time the medical bay had emptied, Ratchet was already slumped in his chair, helm leaning on his energon-coated hands. He could have cared less about how dirty they were, exhaustion overcoming his will to do anything else. Behind him Cylinder worked diligently with some solvent to get the same residue out of her joints. Thankfully, no one had been seriously injured today. For a small unit with no reinforcements on their way, the medic would be damned if her let something happen to the crew on his watch. The assistance, he had to admit, lifted his own morale a bit, and kept his confidence from wavering as the injured file din and out of the bay.

Without turning around, Ratchet muttered to the femme, "You did well, kid."

Bright blue optics looked up briefly before returning their focus to the task at hand. "Thank you," she replied quietly.

Ratchet did not hear another word from Cylinder for the rest of the night. Later that evening, he sent her away to recharge so he could finish the paperwork he had been doing before the attack. As he scanned mindlessly over each file, another thought kept poking through in the back of his mind. It had been there all day, and no matter how hard he tried to ignore it, it kept returning, stronger than the impulse before it. Finally the nagging had worn out his patience, and Ratchet was forced to comply with the thought.

Producing a data pad from a locked drawer, the medic set it on his desk and flipped it on. Numerous files appeared on the screen, but the one he was interested in displayed numerous lines of code. As he carefully moved through it, reading line by line, he finally found what he was looking for: the processor.

Cylinder's strange behavior today did more than worry Ratchet. He wanted to believe that whatever it was she did was just a result of dumb luck, an early indicator of a gifted medic, but his thoughts took him elsewhere into territory much, much darker. He had been there when Perceptor had revealed his findings about Cylinder; he was also the first one to pass the theory off as the ludicrous rant of a scientist who had become too invested in his projects. But now, his faith in the falsehood of those claims was beginning to fade. Day by day, something the femme did, no matter how miniscule, made him think twice about her nature.

Maybe she was developing beyond his or any other Autobot's control. Maybe it was time to do a full diagnostic scan on her.

Or maybe he was panicking over nothing. For a mech that was usually an expert at staying calm when things started to get overwhelming in the medical bay, Ratchet sure had a knack for perseverating on the most random issues and losing his temper on most other occasions.

He was pulled from his thoughts when a certain line of code crossed his optics. This particular one had been highlighted by Perceptor and then circled later on by Wheeljack. Though Ratchet was no code expert, even he knew that the order in which the cybernetic material had arranged itself was unlike anything he had ever seen, and apparently, that had been the case for the two scientists. There was a sinking feeling in his spark as he delved further into it, but despite his attempt to piece together his jumbled thoughts and the letters that made no sense in their arrangement, he could not draw any conclusions to quell the unsettling feeling.

Frowning, he switched the data pad off and threw it back in the drawer. There was nothing to be worried about, he reminded himself. Everything will be fine.

* * *

Though Cylinder had grown used to watching others do the fighting for her, her drive to fight never faded. It was a primal desire that burned deep within her spark for as long as she could remember, begging to be released. Many times this instinct saved the femme from harm, but it was also her worst enemy, throwing her into situations that were sometimes too great for her to handle.

Perceptor had confirmed that at the moment, there were no serious injuries to any of the Autobots in this scuffle, so he permitted Cylinder to walk outside but forbade her from fighting. Not that it mattered. She had watched plenty of fights between organic species on the sidelines before. What was one more?

Rounding the corner of the marketplace made her regret the thought. Shouts of anger and cries of pain filled the air. Though Cylinder had seen the fight from the makeshift medical building, the sight of it up close made her realize just how deadly it was.

Random elements were flung about without any target in mind, forcing Cylinder to duck behind a building as flying rocks hurdled towards her. Amongst the scuffle stood several Autobots doing what they could to keep the much smaller dragons and basilisks separated from each other, though their immense size in comparison made it difficult to maneuver out of fear of crushing one of them. Rodimus and Silver were nowhere to be found. The guardians stood to the side, barking at both dragons and basilisks alike to stop fighting though doing nothing to put their own bodies between them.

One guardian did manage to force his way into the skirmish, only to be knocked back by a blast from one of his own. The orange-scaled fire dragon was shaking the settling dust off his body when he noticed the blue femme nearby.

"It's been awhile," Aesir coughed, referring to Cylinder's absence from Syandemel's rebuilding thanks to her injuries. The Fire Guardian's voice was raspy from the dust and smoke, horns and claws darkened by the dirt that had been kicked up in the plaza. His cloak, the symbol of his power, was once again missing, though knowing Aesir, it was probably not too far away. His blue markings seemed abnormally dull, and his large body shook in exhaustion.

"What happened?" Cylinder asked, instinctively reaching for her swords. She felt as though she could hear Perceptor's disapproving voice from here, though she began to realize it was only the Voice repeating his stern commands.

Aesir growled in frustration, "I don't know, someone made a snide comment and it just blew up from there … Literally – one of those bastards ignited the air and caused an explosion."

"A basilisk did?" Cylinder asked reluctantly, crouching down to hear the Fire Guardian better.

"That's what I've been told."

"Who told you?"

"Does it matter?"

Cylinder sighed. Unfortunately, it very much did. She had lived through enough of the war to know that nothing was as black and white as it seemed. It did not matter the side one was on – there were always those who would intentionally mislead others into drawing conclusions before the whole truth came to light.

Without answering, the femme rose and walked into the chaos, leaving Aesir to sit and stare at her. A dragon fell at her feet, furiously batting his wing from a burn he had received. Before he could return to the fight, a large hand fell on his shoulder. When he turned around, he shuddered at the sight of the taller femme, body stiffening as her optics roamed over him.

"What is this accomplishing?" she asked slowly to ensure the dragon heard her. He replied by staring at her confusedly.

"Like you're the one to talk," he growled, shaking the femme's hand away, "You're one of the ones that brought them here in the first place."

It was Cylinder's turn to be confused, "Why is that a problem?" she asked incredulously.

"If I were you I'd stay out of it," he replied, avoiding the question, "You Autobots have already done enough." The dragon turned and ran back towards the fight, but not before adding a final word, "You're not wanted here anymore anyway."

Cylinder stared blankly at the empty spot where the dragon had been standing. What did he mean by that? The Autobots had been helping the dragons. It was not their fault the Decepticons were here. Sure, it was her fault Marchosias was free, but how could a random dragon know that she had been responsible?

The firing of two warning shots pulled her from her thoughts. A burst of light accompanied the blaster fire, halting the fight immediately. Cylinder looked in the direction of the shots. Standing there were Ultra Magnus and Springer with Rodimus in front. Behind them trailed Silver and Roenel, the basilisk elder. For an organic that was thousands of years old, it was surprising to see him keep up with the smaller dragoness so effortlessly.

"Alright, that's enough," Ultra Magnus barked. The Autobot second-in-command pointed his rifle to the ground, though at his stature, it could have easily been facing the crowd before him. "If anyone so much as moves before we're done assessing damages, Springer and I will personally turn you to ash." Springer made a similar gesture with his own rifle to drive home the point.

Cylinder stared in disbelief at the blue and red Autobot, stunned into silence like the rest of the crowd that now trembled at the sight of the large guns. "Magnus," she started to say, tone hinting at her shock.

Ultra Magnus shot the femme a very displeased glare in response, optics narrow, "You are in no position to argue here. I suggest you stay quiet."

Cylinder narrowed her own optics in disgust. Did he really just speak to her that way? Sure, she was his subordinate and his anger was justified, but he had never spoken to her like that before. She looked to Rodimus, but the Autobot leader did not acknowledge her.

As the Autobots who were caught in the fray began to move from body to body to inspect injuries for godly dragons to heal, Cylinder noticed that Silver had begun to cry. The dragoness could certainly express a wide range of emotions, but it was rare for her to cry like this, especially since the femme had assumed she had been through much worse.

Cylinder turned to Aesir, who was busy fumbling with his spotless guardian's cloak he no doubt left the fight to retrieve. "What's her deal?" she asked, pointing to Silver.

Aesir looked around the femme at the dragoness, who was now being consoled by Roe and his daughter Jëra, another basilisk who had been involved in the fight but managed to avoid any serious harm.

"Isn't it obvious?" the guardian asked. "She's convinced that all of this is her fault."

"How?"

"She believes that by bringing the basilisks here, it's caused all this tension," Aesir continued.

"I'm not sure I buy that," Cylinder muttered.

Aesir paused, watching as Rodimus joined in on comforting the gray dragoness. The guardian realized now might have been a good time to step in as well, as he was Silver's primary caretaker so long as she was within the city's walls.

"Look, I can tell she trusts you," he sighed, returning his gaze to Cylinder, "She thinks it's her fault Marchosias has returned, and his presence has led to the tension."

Cylinder's spark stirred. The Voice's laugh made her spinal strut seize and her teeth clench.

Without responding, she walked slowly over to the dragoness. "It's not your fault, okay?" she struggled to push the words through, fists clenched against her side.

"What?" Silver whispered hastily, wiping her face with the back of her paw.

"Whoever's fault it is," Roe spoke before Cylinder could continue, "That should have no impact on how my people are treated."

Cylinder wanted to keep talking, but settled to nod in agreement towards the basilisk. Though she had not known them for long, the femme had been able to see the differences between them and Marchosias. They were nothing like him, and yet, they were being treated as if their very presence invited him to Syandemel's borders.

Rodimus disagreed. "Your people could have started this fight for all we know. The dragons could have been acting in self-defense."

Cylinder tried to speak up but was halted by a wave of her leader's hand.

A guardian, red in color and stalky in build, took her place, "Well when you're related to Marchosias, it's understandable for our citizens to feel like their lives are constantly in jeopardy with you living amongst us. I'd be anxious too."

"What did you just say?" Jëra snapped angrily. The basilisk, who had been in the shape of a bird, her primary form, changed shape into a dark green dragon, wings pointed at the guardian and lips curled up in disgust.

More voices began to chime in as the shouting once more picked up. Dragons and basilisks who had not initially been part of the conversation now began to chirp back and forth at each other. Instinctively, Cylinder pulled Silver behind her, but the curious gray dragoness managed to worm her way out of the femme's movements.

Another warning shot ripped through the air, this time from Rodimus' rifle. "I don't care who started the fight," he shouted, "There needs to be a discussion. Now."

No one was about to argue with the Cybertronian brandishing his gun. Slowly, Autobots began to separate dragons and basilisks, each group being escorted to a different sector of the city. For now, the basilisks would remain in quarantine, the same cold, dark place Cylinder had been taken to after her attack on Barricade in his dragon form. The guardians claimed it was for the dragons' protection, though it would have been better to say it was for the basilisks' safety, as many of the dragons continued to hiss and snarl at them on the way there.

* * *

The discussions between the guardians and the basilisk elders with Rodimus and Ultra Magnus as mediators lasted long into the evening.

Being not much of a diplomatic expert, Cylinder elected to stay outside the Grand Temple where the talks were being held so that someone could keep an eye, or optic, on Silver. The dragoness had been pacing nervously across the plaza outside for the last half hour, jaw clenched tightly and tail waving in agitation.

Cylinder had to imagine that Silver's father not being here had something to do with her nervousness. Coldfang, the Galactic Guardian and ruler of the Dragon Realms had been missing for a while, the communication between him and his daughter or any of the other guardians for that matter minimal. His inclination to support the basilisks more than likely could counter the most fervent hatred against them by some of the guardians, but with him absent Cylinder could only imagine how the talks inside were going. Probably not well, she mused.

"Why are you so quiet?" Silver suddenly blurted when she noticed the femme staring blankly towards the sky. "I mean, I know you don't talk that much, but geez."

Her comment earned a slight chuckle from the femme. "I'm just tired," she muttered, "Even metal bodies undergo stress."

Silver folded her wings against her body and sat down to face the femme, head tilted slightly, "You've been stressed since before your injuries, though. Heck, you've been stressed since we met, and frankly before that."

Cylinder averted her gaze, remembering that the dragoness had been following them from a distance the first time they appeared in the Dragon Realms. Just how much she saw and knew though was still a mystery to the femme. Without responding, she shook her head, refocusing her attention on the sky. The rainclouds had dispersed enough to allow a window to the stars above, giving Cylinder the distraction she needed without having to justify her blank stares.

Silver refused to take the silence as an answer. "What's on your mind?" she pressed, moving closer to the femme.

Cylinder's optics remained stationary, taking in the nighttime display. It was a full moon tonight, meaning that it would be visible indefinitely for some time, its immense size reflecting enough light that night vision was unnecessary. A thought crossed her mind, and before she could force herself to stop it, the words flowed without restraint.

"It's not what, but–"

"But who?"

Cylinder immediately looked away from the sky. Why on Cybertron did she just say that? What possessed her to so much as mention the Voice? She learned early on that no one would believe her if she told them that something spoke to her from within her head. And for that matter, how did Silver come to that conclusion? There was no way the dragoness would believe her. And yet, as her optics fell on the gray form that glistened in the moonlight, tail swaying back in forth and body relaxed, she suddenly felt as though her words, no matter how outrageous, were safe with Silver.

Nonetheless, the femme tried to deflect the question. "No. Don't worry about it."

Silver arched her brow and huffed a breath of ice. To be fair, she had opened up to Cylinder about her imprisonment under Marchosias, her strained relationship with her father, and her dead mother. There was nothing wrong with sharing a secret or two on the Aerialbot's end. The Voice purred in the back of her processor.

 _Quid pro quo_ , it whispered the Earth phrase so beautifully for such a venomous sounding noise, leaving Cylinder no choice but to comply as it egged her on.

Reluctantly, she caved, "I wouldn't even know where to begin with that one."

Silver rewarded the femme with an eager smile, "Try me."

Cylinder paused, filing through her processor to piece her broken memories together. "It's like one day, everything is normal, and the next, you come online and realize you're no longer alone."

"Like there's someone else there?"

"Sort of. I started calling it the Voice."

"What does the Voice do?" Silver was now sitting next to Cylinder, doing her best to stretch her wing around the much larger Cybertronian. For some reason, she did not seem to be bothered by the femme's words, much to Cylinder's relief.

"It talks to me," she replied, words reduced to a whisper, "It makes me remember things. It warns me. I don't know why."

Silver thought for a moment, "Do you live alone?"

Cylinder nodded.

"You told me you live in an older part of Cybertron, right?" she paused to wait for the femme's affirmation, "Well, what if it's a ghost? You said Starscream was at one point and the energon brought him back to life, so maybe it's trying to get you to do the same."

Cylinder considered the words. That did not seem impossible, yet also unlikely. "If that's the case then using it would have restored its life force by now," she refuted, "And even then, why would it choose to bother me now?"

"Well," Silver spoke slowly as she dug her claws into the soft dirt beneath her, "Sometimes spirits that die suddenly and violently can be triggered by other violent events. What happened before the Voice started talking to you?"

Cylinder hesitated. The Voice rumbled in excitement at the question, digging deep into her processor to resurface images she had often tried to forget. The screaming, the hails of gunfire, watching helplessly as bots died in front of her, discovering her loved ones that had been left for scrap, and of course, an assault on her home – all of these triggering her mental breakdown and leaving her a sad, pathetic shell of the femme she once was.

"A lot," was all she could manage to say as the Voice quietly continued its assault on her mind.

"Maybe it's a manifestation of your trauma," Silver suggested, knowing all to well what that felt like. "Sometimes I hear things too – random memories and whatnot. You could just be getting echoes of your memories."

Cylinder immediately shook her head. While that may have been true, the memories would never have resurfaced if it were not for the Voice. "There's something else to it. Something more sentient."

Silver frowned, "Well who do you think it could be?"

The only response was a shrug.

"Oh come on," the dragoness pressed in subdued frustration, determined to find an answer, "Think about it. What do you see?"

Cylinder switched her optics off to avoid any distractions from the dragoness flopping about at her feet. Her mind settled itself as best as it could, thoughts roaming about deliberately in the massive processor. Just like the time she tried to picture the face that belonged to the Voice, a blurry image appeared before her in the darkness of her mind. It was formless, hazy, but one feature stood out clearly.

"I see purple optics," Cylinder muttered, her own blue optics flickering back on.

"Have you seen them before?" Silver asked curiously.

"Not these ones beyond my own thoughts." For some reason, it felt good to talk about the Voice. Knowing that Silver was willing to listen _and_ willing to help kept the femme confident that there was no danger here. At the very least, she had an image of the Voice, however small of a detail it was. She also had someone she could confide in, something she wished she had after all these years of being alone on Cybertron.

Both Cylinder and Silver abruptly sprang to their feet when the doors to the temple swung open. The basilisks exited first, followed by the guardians and then the Autobots. The somber expressions on the basilisks faces gave the femme all the answers she needed about how well the meeting went.

Roe immediately made eye contact with Silver and walked towards her, head lowered and posture relaxed to keep the guardians from being suspicious. They kept their guard up anyway, intent on protecting the heir to the Galactic Guardianship at any costs.

"Thank you for everything you and your father have done for us," he spoke softly, looking away when Silver's wings and tail dropped to the ground in defeat. "We have come to the conclusion that co-existing at this point in time is not possible."

"There's no reason though," Silver blurted, raising her voice so the other guardians could hear.

Jëra huffed in agreement, "Yes, but with Marchosias being free the dragons need someone to blame."

Cylinder remained silent, mouth pressed into a firm line, brow furrowed. So that was the reason they were being forced out. The dragons needed a scapegoat, so the most logical answer was to blame his next of kin.

"They can't seriously believe you did it though," she spoke softly, voice hoarse. She tried to look at Rodimus for help, but the Autobot leader paid her no mind. Of course he could not believe that – she told him it was her fault. So why was he standing there in silence?

 _I'm surprised you haven't taken the fall_ , the Voice rumbled. Cylinder mentally told it to shut up in response. It was right, though. She should have spoken up. But there was no reason until this point to think the dragons would attack the basilisks this way, whether they started that stupid fight or not. She began to regret not sitting in on the discussions. Though she had hidden the Dragon Stone, the only object capable of cutting Marchosias free of his prison, she was more than willing to dig it up to prove their innocence. And yet, she could not bring herself to move. For once, the Voice was not stopping her. It was the Aerialbot herself who refused to move.

The basilisks brought the news to their people, and Cylinder stood alone on a plateau, watching from afar as they began to file out of the city's newly reconstructed walls, the walls they helped rebuild. How ironic. After awhile the femme noticed that Silver was no longer standing next to her, and she mentally kicked herself for not paying more attention to the distressed dragoness. The mental struggle and regret she had been dealing with were more than enough to keep her distracted, but that did not change the fact that Silver was in a similar state. Perhaps they should have been keeping an eye on each other from the start.

As she stood in silence, she began to feel as though she was not alone. Turning on her heel, she came face-to-face with a tall, green dragon. The material in his guardian's cloak shone brightly in the night sky, and his pupil-less eyes reflected the moon perfectly. Acid's normally bright expression had been replaced with one of neutrality, and maybe a hint of sadness.

"Where's Serina?" Cylinder asked softly to break the ice, referring to the Sludge Guardian that often accompanied Acid within the city. As the two remaining Guardians or the Trine Guard, the dragons sworn to guard Marchosias' prison, there was not much they could do now that he had been released except make preparations for a new one should he be caught again.

"Probably somewhere in the valley saying her goodbyes," Acid replied nonchalantly, a bit uncharacteristic of the normally heartwarming tone Cylinder was used to, "She likes those basilisks."

Cylinder nodded, albeit suspiciously, and returned her attention to the mass exodus, but another thought weighed on her mind. "Acid, I have a question for you."

"Go ahead," he replied calmly.

Cylinder hesitated for a moment. She knew she could not pick her words carefully enough to obscure her guilt. Acid was too smart for that.

"You were there at the talks. You don't seriously think the basilisks are responsible for Marchosias walking free, do you?"

There was another pause, and Cylinder stiffened in the tension before Acid replied.

"I think we both know the answer to that."

The femme's spark sunk. She did not dare look back. The venom in his voice, the coldness in his movements – Acid knew. The femme had just confessed to her crime, and a dragon in one of the highest positions of power had proven her guilty.

"Then why are you allowing this?" she turned, hoping to change the subject or at least shift the blame so the basilisks did not have to suffer, but Acid was gone. Cylinder activated her night vision and scanned the hillside, but the guardian was nowhere to be found.

 _Damn_ , she thought to herself, though the Voice heard.

 _Don't act like it's not funny_ , it chirped.

"It isn't," Cylinder said aloud, "They're demonizing a whole species because of my actions.

 _It was bound to happen whether you acted or not. Do you see that?_ Cylinder turned to look back into the valley. _This is what division purely out of hatred does to them. It existed long before you got here and it will stay long after your spark has burned out. Let's face it, the social fabric that once ruled here is slowly coming undone. You just happened to help speed up the process._

"It's my fault," she muttered emphatically, acknowledging her guilt once more.

 _This was bound to happen anyway_ , the Voice pressed.

Cylinder tried to walk away, to saunter back to the medical lab so that she did not have to watch the depressing scene unfold, but an unseen force stopped her in her tracks.

 _Oh don't leave now_ , the Voice spoke, this time darker and more foreboding.

Reluctantly, the femme turned around. That was when the flashes began.

* * *

The sound of blaster fire had not bothered Cylinder in many years. A side effect of being born into a war was being all too familiar with the chaos that surrounded you to the point where it was strange not to be around it, where silence was more crushing than carnage and death itself. As a medic, the femme had to endure the shrill sound of it out in the field, to suppress the noise and filter it out of her audios so that she would not get distracted when someone needed help. Years of dealing with this allowed her to ignore the calamity.

The screams of the innocent made it come rushing back to her. The flashes of light did not bother Cylinder, but the screams made her body surge forward with rage, audios ringing violently.

On the other side of the city, the side where the basilisks had been quarantined, several still remained. Jëra had been sent by her father to retrieve them, but when she reached the entrance to the stone buildings, the carnage began. It was her bird form's scream, the same that greeted her, Rodimus, and Silver in the forest that penetrated the air, rivaling that of the blaster fire. At the center of it, rifles ablaze, were several Autobots led by Ultra Magnus.

The stoic second-in-command stood motionless, optics trained on the panicked group of basilisks. His concentration was halted when a thin, blue blade cleanly sliced off the barrel of the head executioner's gun. All Autobots froze in place when one of their own stood between them and the pile of ash that was once the terrified group of basilisks. Her optics glowed dangerously bright, swords poised to lash out again.

"Cylinder," Ultra Magnus' voice boomed, "Stand down, or we will force you–"

"What are you doing to them?!" she shouted without letting the second-in-command finish. Behind her Jëra continued to scream in horror.

"These basilisks started the fight in the plaza – it is fitting that they die by execution," he replied coldly.

"A firing squad?" Cylinder barked louder, "Based on what evidence?"

"Plenty," he replied coolly, "Even so, it doesn't detract from their guilt in other areas."

By now Rodimus had arrived with some of the guardians in tow. Cylinder, knowing full well how bad she looked to the rest of her comrades, sheathed her swords, but continued to stare down her superior with the same coldness he was giving her.

"They're not guilty of anything but their relationship to Marchosias. That's not worth killing them over." When Ultra Magnus did not reply, she continued, "What happened to the rule of law? You, Magnus, of all bots, should know that execution without giving them a chance to make their case violates every law in the universe. If we do this, we're no better than the Decepticons! They could have been proven innocent for all we know!"

Ultra Magnus huffed, "I know you're young, Cylinder, but in case you didn't know, when there's a threat to someone else's life, war will always operate under a moral gray area. Ideas of right and wrong can be very subjective when you're trying to defend an alien race."

"That doesn't take away from the fact–" she was stopped when Rodimus stepped between them. Maybe he could ease the situation.

"Alright," he spoke firmly, "There's no need for anymore fighting. Cyl, you're escalating things beyond where they need to be."

Cylinder scoffed, " _I'm_ escalating things? Autobots just murdered basilisks without a valid reason. These people rely on us to end what we started, not kill those we think are dangerous."

"What _we_ started?" he retorted bluntly.

Cylinder stared blankly in disgust. As the smoke rose from the charred bodies of basilisks she would never know and Jëra screamed for an explanation, the femme lowered her head and turned around. She transformed, jet engines propelling her into the night sky.

"Should we do something about her?" Ultra Magnus asked, voice still monotonous and cold. He kicked a piece of charred bone out of his path.

Rodimus shook his head, "She's not our priority. Whatever happened here is going to have a lot of repercussions." His tone was biting, forcing the much larger second-in-command to lower his head in apology.

"Perhaps I behaved too rashly."

Rodimus ignored the comment, eyeing the smoking heap of dead basilisks, "Let's find Silver and see what we can do – Cyl will calm down eventually."

As Syandemel faded into the distance, Cylinder leveled out and slowed down, going nowhere in particular but away from the carnage. The open air gave her some time to think. With no one to stop her, she activated her personal radio and made a call.


End file.
